Fallout Equestria: Sunrise Stardust and The Burned World -Censored Ver
by JasonEpsilon725
Summary: War has changed, but Sunrise Stardust has a plan to make Equestria great again. He simply needs to stage a coup in his overpopulated bunker, lead his Black Stars to victory against the Tribals, Raiders, and worse who made the Equestrian Wasteland their home, and take back Baltimare, the heart of pre-war Equestria's steel industry, all in under two months. Now with censored swears!
1. Past

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together and created harmony in all the land.

To do this, the eldest used her Unicorn powers to raise the sun at dawn.

The younger brought out the moon to begin the night.

Thus, the two sisters maintained balance for their kingdom and their subjects, all the different types of ponies.

Then, everything changed when the Zebra Nation attacked.

For as the two sisters made their country great over the course of their long and prosperous reign, lesser countries became resentful. The ponies relished and played in the day Princess Celestia brought forth, and slept peacefully during the nights under blankets of stars painted by Princess Luna. Meanwhile, Griffons were still clawing each other's throats out over petty disagreements regarding who could sit on the biggest throne atop the highest peak of the tallest frozen, barren mountain. Dragons were still goading each other into reaching new and ever-greater levels of stupidity by day and sleeping atop mountains of stolen treasure by night. Zebra tribes were still attacking each other, casting imaginary curses upon each other, throwing spears at each other, killing each other, exploiting and enslaving each other, and killing each other, as if the whole species had decided to hold off on that whole "Leave the Tribal Stage and enter the Civilization Stage" thing behind until only one backwards tribe remained on its continent, and that tribe would be left with no excuses and no scapegoats.

Say what you will about Griffons, their foul moods, their poor tempers, their frequent mating frenzies, and everything else that makes them what they are, but they at least have some accomplishments to their name, even though their culture and its fetishization of material possessions and how tough you can act in public suffered a complete societal collapse when, if experts are to be believed, their king lost his shiny idol of shininess and with it, the respect of his Griffons. Without the virtues of honesty, loyalty, laughter(Could somepony remind me again why this one wasn't given a more specific yet dignified name, like optimism or heart or cheer?), kindness, generosity or the magic of friendship, the whole species descended into the worst depths of greed and egotistical selfishness, constantly suffering at the claws of its own kind while what goods each Griffon hoarded and kept from circulation served no purpose to the greater whole.

Zebras, on the other hoof... Do they have an excuse? Did they ever have an excuse? What can excuse the things they have done? Was there ever a point in history when they were anything more than what they were on the day the Megaspells were cast? When that dark day is the high point of your species as a whole, what does it say about your species and the land it occupies? How could their culture collapse when they had no culture to begin with, their "Trained" soldiers could still easily pass for common thieving and raping bandits and pirates, and their tyrannical totalitarian mad king was a monster that ordered the deaths of Wonderbolts and Foals alike, still stuck in that stone-age "Be the biggest monster or the bigger monsters will get you" mentality?

I'll get to them later. In any case... for the longest time, things were great for the ponies of Equestria. It's just a shame Ponykind's greatness never extended beyond its borders. Perhaps, if other beings were ready to accept friendship into their lives, things would have turned out differently.

One fateful day, Nightmare Moon was turned to the dark side, determined to make the night last forever. Princess Celestia handled this in a single afternoon, sealing the magically-corrupted being away in the moon for a thousand years. Experts believe the "Seal within X" function of the Elements of Harmony can only designate a duration in increments of a thousand years. Despite how short eternal night lasted, the Zebra Empire decided this one scary day was the perfect catalyst for some new scary stories to keep the other Zebra foals up at night. Some new Porquoi story to tell the stupid foals why you didn't get eaten by Jaguars in the forest or attack enemy tribes at night, and why you instead slept in mud huts at night. And that subspecies decided the stories of an evil night monster with stars that were actually far-off lights glinting and glimmering on the edges of alien superweapons simply must have been true, because other Zebras said it was. I swear, Sheep would laugh at these things if they knew how.

One thousand years later, Nightmare Moon returned. The brilliant Twilight Sparkle squashed this threat in under an hour before a single pony died from the horrible famines everlasting night would cause, seeking out the other five Elements of Harmony and purifying the magic-induced corruption from Nightmare Moon's body, turning her pure once again. Despite threatening to destroy the world, and attempting to do so, solely to sate her own ego and wounded feelings, Princess Celestia forgave her. After all, this was something Nightmare Moon tried to do, not Princess Luna. And Princess Luna... She was not furious at her sister for sending her to the moon, she was apologetic for forcing her horn, for putting Princess Celestia in a position where she had to choose between her friendship with her sister and her duty to her ponies.

The two made up, and everything was fine.

Then, everything changed when the Zebra nation attacked. Only the Elements of Harmony, masters of Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, Generosity, Kindness, and Magic could stop them. But when the world needed them most, they f**ked up.

There really is no way to put a more positive or eloquent spin on that, and to use a less vulgar term would be a disservice to the enormity of their mistake and the lost lives of all who suffered because of it. They f*cked up, and then everything went to sh*t. The Elements of Harmony were magical warriors, not politicians or researchers, and certainly not experts in matters of war by any stretch of the imagination. This was something few of them were ready for, certainly not whoever was responsible for those stupid dedicated designated polka-playing machines. Experts believe one of those Ministry Mares even descended into drug addiction, the degenerate. They would not be ready to manage something of this scale during the best of times, but during a global crisis such as the Zebra Problem?

Simply put, while the Elements of Harmony could remove magical corruption, they could not remove the darker, more subtle evils, evils that were, for some beings, normal. They could not purge the evil from Zebrakind.

Some Zebra operatives posing as "Experts" claim that the war between Equestria and the Zebra Empire was actually started by ponykind. These "Experts" then argue against the necessity of that war, and repeatedly insult Equestrian society for thinking its virtues of harmony and friendship were in any way better than the virtueless and worthless society of Zebrakind, as if the simple tribal doctrine of "Look after one's kin" could possibly have an edge over a society that naturally looks after its own without needing the tribalist mentality to offer "If you do this, you get to lord it over the ponies" as a reward. I'm glad those spies were silenced by the Ministries before their lies could fool any fools. But even if those "Experts" were correct, I point to the economic position Equestria was in, and then, I ask: If I found a group of ponies in a desert, dying slowly from thirst, would it be moral of me to charge them all the money they and their families and everypony in their country of origin had for the life-giving liquid their bodies depended on? Would it be moral for me to charge them so much money, it put them into a lifetime of debt that would ensure they would spend their lives financially enslaved to me? Would it be moral for me to charge them so much, the younger mares and stallions of their family would have to whore themselves out to keep up with the ever-growing inflation on the loan I would give them, so that they could afford my water? Would it be moral for some of those ponies to attack me and try to take the water by force? If they did, would it be moral for me to wipe the whole group out in self-defense? If no fighting broke out, and if the group's leader politely insisted on a better price, or begged for one, would it be moral for me to attack him over the perceived insolence, or kill a few hundred of his country's soldiers while he was forced to watch? At the end of the day, that was why the war had to happen, and why the war got so bad so quickly. Ponykind needed coal from the Zebra lands, but they still thought they could solve all their problems with friendship and kindness. Ponykind was ready to drag the planet and everypony onto it into a bright new future of prosperity and magic, and they forgot not everypony... Well, everypony wanted that, but they forgot not everyTHING wanted that. Meanwhile, a culture that had barely left its tribal ways of killing and exploiting and enslaving other tribes saw a new tribe it could exploit, the tribe of Po-nee-kind. And while necessity may have started the war, morality continued it and escalated it.

I doubt I need to remind anypony what happened to the Wonderbolts that died at the hooves of the Zebra "Pirates" the mad Zebra king harbored and aided. If that king was not corrupt, if that king was not evil, he would have helped ponykind take those pirates down for making his species look bad. And that's me being Equestrian and assuming the Pirates somehow able to kill Wonderbolts weren't actually drugged-up potion-chugging Zebra soldiers all along. And then, there's Littlehorn. I doubt I need to remind anypony what happened to Littlehorn. Go on, blame a simple miscommunication for the inherent evils of Zebrakind, claim the poor idiots just didn't know better. Blame a language barrier in a world where translation spells exist and ponies would happily give you a "How to speak Equestrian" book if asked. You probably wouldn't even need to visit a library. Which is good, because all those libraries lie in ruins right now, thanks to Zebras. Blame circumstance. Blame a misunderstanding. Blame the whims of fate that put genocidal Zebras in charge of stupid, cowardly, genocidal Zebras that would rather massacre a school if asked than turn around and shoot the monsters of a higher rank. Blame anything other than Zebras themselves, or the culture they followed, if you are so inclined.

Some actions... Some actions set a precedent. If your neighbours swear, it's ok for you to swear when you demand they stop before foals have their innocent ears forever tainted. If the foe you are fighting fights dirty, it's ok for you to fight dirty, because you need to end this fight one way or another before he causes serious damage to your body, and on a moral level, he must be punished for his evil. If the rules of Hoofball are changed, even this change occurs in the middle of a game, you need to adapt to those new rules and win, not stay stuck in your own ways and complain about your opponent's "Cheating", then insist you won a moral victory by losing the real battle and letting down all who relied upon you for the sake of your feelings, be they gamblers or fans or foals or anypony else who put their trust in you. And yet, time and time again, despite the ever-escalating evil actions of Zebras, from disguising their soldiers as unaffiliated pirates and holding ponies hostage to kill the small covert team of rescuers to massacring schools full of foals, even responding to the first healing Megaspell's usage by resuming a war instead of letting the victors keep it, ponies never responded in kind. Ponies never sunk to their level, even though they would only have to do so temporarily, to destroy the mad brute and then go back to their songs and sciences. Ponies never acted like Zebras. Zebras might claim we did, but Zebras claimed a lot of things during the war. Wasn't their favoured method of damage control to claim Littlehorn was a secret training ground for the next generation of dangerously powerful battle mages, full of evil dark magic getting forced into the heads of poor mindbroken foals that needed mercy-killing, and burning down this school full of unarmed civilian foals too young to bugger and too young to fight and too young to die was somehow justified because some cowardly idiot Zebras fleeing their homeland got caught and killed by Luna's guards for being a member of the Zebra species, a species that showed the world what it was worth in Littlehorn? This species is dangerously evil, and should be wiped out for the good of the world. Or, this species is dangerously stupid, and should be wiped out for the safety of the world. If you disagree with either of these statements, look outside.

Outside... where the skyscrapers our ancestors toiled in the sun to build have been reduced to charred husks, their corpses picked at by scavengers desperately searching for their next meal in a world where food should be as plentiful as dirt and love. Outside, where the trees their ancestors toiled in the sun to plant have been wiped away, to never again give shade or shelter to Ponykind. Outside, where the land their ancestors fought for and died to protect is scorched, salted, and saturated with tainted, evil magic.

Outside, where the end result of showing kindness to your enemy is evident, a scarred world giving us all one last grim reminder: You can't trust a Zebra as far as you can throw the grenade that'd kill them, no matter how far that may be.

The Griffons claimed they waged war to gather wealth and glory. The Pegasi went from protectors demanding tribute to a staunch ally in times of war, until the day their descendants in Cloudsdale shamed them. The Dragon Lord Torch shaped inhospitable and infertile land and a populace of greedy fools into one colossal fortress, all to protect his treasures.

And the size, scale, and tactics of those conflicts will never be seen again.

As lone wanderers, mad tribals, and rabid beasts outside these walls fight with all their might over the last scraps of meat on the carcass of a dead world, one thing is clear.

War... has changed.

 _-Sunrise Stardust, Age 8 – Zebras, Not Even Once._

Excellent work, as always! I see you learned much from my lectures. It's nice to see a foal as rational, mature, patriotic, and honest as yourself. In addition, I see you're still working on your problem with run-on sentences. No matter, I'm sure you'll improve with time. Your usage of adult language was shocking, but it seems that was your intention. Still, avoid overusing such foul language, for the more it is heard from one mouth, the more of its presence and shock value is lost.

Top marks.

 _-Chalk Marks, Teacher of Class 7._

* * *

Somewhere in the Equestrian Wasteland, under a black-charred sky, in a lonely building in a ruined city that stood like a wordless grave marker for those who died there, an old cassette player was still playing the old, forgotten song near the skeleton of the one who'd chosen to loop that song.

"My little pony, my little pony…"

All was silent and still in this monument to death, and the singer's long note rose alone in an echoing heck, miles away from me.

Me, I was somewhere else, miles underground and ready to change that.

But first, some backstory.

I was a young lad, too young to have any solid memories or thoughts prior to this, when I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be awesome.

I wanted to be incredible, and when I was young, it was easy to swear to myself that I'd do whatever it took to become incredible.

And the path to becoming awesome seemed so simple. Read a lot, work out a lot, but not too much, schmooze some higher-ups when the time was right, learn an instrument, make the greatest band of all time… It all seemed so easy when I wrote it down on imaginary paper using an imaginary quill pen in my own mind, so long ago.

I wanted to be remembered. I wanted my name in the history books.

And you can see for yourself how that turned out. That's why I'm writing this. I want to tell you how all of this went down, from the start. Read on, unless you're too young to hear words such as p***y and f*ck, and other terms I try to use sparingly, as overusing them dulls their f**king impact. I believe that when they come out of nowhere, like a smear of crap on an otherwise-nice painting, that's when they're the most noticeable. But on a painting of crap, who'd notice one more smear of the real thing? This is the censored version of my story, however, which has the worst profanities and most inappropriate scenes censored out. Gory scenes of gruesome deaths, and the kind of thing that you'll only find in the secret adult book collections of your parents, will be censored from this story inconsistently and inefficiently. I make no promises regarding how well these elements integral to my story will be censored, so you should really read the uncensored, unrated, and unedited version, instead.

In any case, this isn't a tale you can tell your foals, or your grandmare. Unless your grandmare is into sweeping epics with more words than half her literary collection combined, horrible equine violence, great wars, and cute ponies getting stupid manestyles and worse Cutie Marks and dying like mutated flies at the hands of cute and traditional and moral ponies with guns. This is a tale I personally consider for mature mares and stallions only, because it's got a lot of violence and more than a few bad words. This isn't a tale you will have heard before, and it contains many revelations about the world I come from, and what happened to the world that created my own. This tale might not be a tale that'll ever get told outside of this book. This is a tale of love, of hate, of hope and hopelessness, of victory and defeat, of great gain and greater loss, of war changing constantly and yet never truly changing at all. This is a tale with many words, many names, many faces, and many lives lost. This is a tale of great heroism, and great evil. This is a tale of brilliance, horror, glory, victory, failure, the past, and the future. This is a tale of… Oh, to heck with this.

I'm sorry, but to be honest with you, I always hated it when the characters in a work of fiction started to talk directly talk to you, the reader. Even if it was only for one scene, at the start of the story. I hated it more when the scene included some self-indulgent 'This really happened! This is a true story, I swear! It happened to me, and it could happen to you too!' disclaimer, which it often did, whenever the books that I've read in my lifetime felt like getting 'Meta', the code word in pseudointellectual literary circles for 'Too lazy to try and maintain the reader's suspension of disbelief and unjustifiably smug about being that lazy about such a vital part of the literature-reading experience'. Even when the disclaimer was modified to something slightly more plausible, such as 'It could have happened to me! Maybe! And it could happen to you too! I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who researched these events a lot and seeks to recreate them faithfully, so if anything seems stupid or contrived or poorly-written, that's why!" or 'These events happened, I only changed the names of the people, and assorted important places, and some dates!' or even 'This really happened, in the universe that I am from! I am going to sell this book in your universe for profit, and to warn you about morality and stuff!', I still found it distasteful. But most of all…

Most of all, I hated when stories would tell you, right at the start, that in the end, the hero wins. Or loses. Either way, it's annoying. It kills the tension, and your ability to put your doubt aside and pretend the writer might actually kill the main character off halfway through an absurdly long story. I have never, in my life, read a book that pulls any of these things off well.

Perhaps that's also why I hate stories written in a first-person perspective so much, and why I swore to myself that if I ever wrote a story about my life, I would write it in the Omniscient Third-Person Perspective, writing about scenes I wasn't there for by using historical records, first-hand and second-hand accounts, and many other methods of information-gathering. I was also really tempted to edit the scene after this one, forcing it to include a scene that never happened, a scene in which I tell some other pony all the important information a new reader might need to know about my world and everything important within it. It would certainly feel a lot more organic than a character just talking directly to the reader. I even had a plan on how I'd give you an infodump about Pip-Bucks: I'd write about myself talking to another pony about the latest Pip-Buck models, while arguing over the features different models had and which one was better. Then, some other pony would show up, and we'd debate ideology and philosophy. And it would seem so natural, you wouldn't even notice that we were talking about events every foal learned about as if we were explaining them to an audience who didn't even know the difference between Laser and Plasma weapons.

Note: And if you don't know the difference, Laser weapons are like guns but better, as they fire armour-penetrating beams of intense light instead of little lead chunks with built-in explosive 'Primers' in them. Plasma weapons are stronger and slower, firing big, unstable blobs of green energy that miss what they're aimed at more often than not. You can dodge a Plasma bolt, but you can't dodge light. Either way, both types of weapons tend to take the same types of ammunition: Energy Cells. Or MicroFusion Cells. Or Electron Charge Packs. They usually take one of those three energy types, so it makes logistics quite a bit easier.

Yes, I had many plans on how to effectively and naturally convey a few tens of thousands of words of exposition to the reader, without it feeling like you were in some kind of school, taking notes for something there would soon be a test on.

But no, I don't want to make this ahistorical. And if I'm going to tell you about who I am, what I did, and what I'm about to do… Well, I'll just have to get this scene over with as soon as possible.

Here I write the story of who I am, what I did, and why I did it. The story of what had to be broken, and the story of what had to be built. I will not call myself a hero, but I will also not obnoxiously wax lyrical about how I'm totally not a hero. I offer unto you everything that made my adventure what it was, and everything that changed me and more, so that you may come to your own conclusions. Hero or villain, mastermind or monster, a beacon of light in the darkness or another rampaging beast in a world gone mad, I want you to decide for yourself what you think of me, once you have read everything I have to write in this tale.

My name is Sunrise Stardust, and this is the story of how I made Equestria great again.

First things first, I should probably tell you about Pip-Bucks. PIP for Personal Information Processor, and Buck for… Well, Bucks. A historian trying to earn points with the audience would say 'Buck' wasn't generally considered anything other than a slang term for colts until about seventy years before the war, and I'm no historian. Is Pipbuck, Pip-Buck, PipBuck, or Pip Bucks the proper way to spell the name of these devices? Yes. Hey, if the advertising department of the company that originally invented and sold these things couldn't be bothered to keep it consistent…

I'll try and keep it consistently spelled as Pip-Buck, except when others spelled it differently in the story. Anyway, while you're certainly going to see for yourself how great these wondrous devices can be soon enough, these little miracles can do many things. Therefore, it stands to reason that I should explain what they are ahead of time and tell you absolutely everything they can do, so it won't seem like I pulled their more fantastical capabilities out of my arse a few dozen chapters from now when backed into a corner. This is my Autobiography, after all, so it would just be weird if the readers came away from it with that impression. Anyway, moving on, Pip-Bucks are small and powerful personal computers, with incredibly advanced circuitry and runework so miniaturized that they can be worn around on your left hooves like some kind of bracelet or hoof-armour. Remarkably dense solid steel makes up their tough outer shells, bulletproof glass coats the regular glass of the Pip-Buck's LCD Display, and a plush polyester-coated leather-stuffed interior ensures that you won't mind the fact that these things don't come off unless you can find a Pip-Buck Technician willing to take it off. These things are tough, durable, and full of useful features. But they aren't invincible, so infrequent trips to the Tech-Sec's local Pip-Buck repair station are an unfortunate fact of life. By Tech-Sec, I mean my the area of my Vault known as the Technological Sector, even though many other individual floors are dedicated to specific areas of science, magiscience, arcane studies, chemistry, or the less flashy kind of robotics. I'll get to that in a minute.

However, at some point, the ponies of my Vault looked at these hoof-mounted personal computers, considered marvels of modern engineering and arcane science for their time, and said, "Not good enough". So while the ponies who ran into this Vault on the day the Megaspells fell and burned the world away wore their traditional Pip-Buck 1.0s, or Pip-Buck 2000s, or even their Pip-Buck 3000s if they were lucky – Ponies stupid enough to have purchased the Pimp-Stallion 3 Billion, dooming themselves to an eternity of lugging around a gold-plated costume-jewelery-encrusted monstrosity that spat in the face of proper design sense and wallets everywhere couldn't really be called lucky, when it came to the lacking intelligence fate had cursed them with – The ponies of my Vault wore something better.

For a while, we called their upgraded form Pip-Buck 3000 Mark 2s. Then, we called them Mark 3s, and Mark 4s, and Mark 5s… And then, we went beyond the realm of adding minor ergonomic enhancements, quality-of-life improvements, minor upgrades to the Eyes-Forward Sparkle's User Interface, and an extra feature or two. We started to get into the REAL overhauls. Experimental materials, operating system alterations and 'Forks' (Alternate versions of the operating system that underwent their own developments and evolutions independently from the others), and more meant that between the infrequent releases of 'Upgraded' models with all-around improvements, we saw many more 'Sidegrades', devices that were better than the standard model in some areas and worse in others. We saw Pip-Bucks made from tougher and heavier materials, and some made from lighter and softer materials. We saw Pip-Bucks with long and thin blades hidden inside them, ready to spring out and stab somepony at a moment's notice. We saw Pip-Bucks with wires that stretched up and connected to a big chunk of computer you had to wear on your back, so your hoof only had to hold the part with the screen. We saw Pip-Bucks with bigger screens, Pip-Bucks with two additional screens beneath the main one to add the illusion of depth to everything it displayed, Pip-Bucks with no physical screens and a thin illusionary screen that floated a foot above the device and could only be seen by the wearer… I want to say the most impressive ones were Pip-Bucks with experimental and fragile screens called Resistive Touch-Screens. Transparent electrodes do cool magiscience shit between two thin layers of screen stuff layered above the thicker and tougher main glass layer, and when you touch the screen, those two thin screen layers are pressed together. More science shit checks the vertical and horizontal location of every touch to feed a number into a program constantly running on the OS, which moves a modded-to-be-invisible pointer onto the location you just touched and clicks for you. However, I remember reading about a model of Pip-Buck that allowed the user to swing it around in any attack its wearer wanted. The device would siphon some magic from its battery to 'Launch' that kinetic energy in an unstable and pulsating ball of force, which would explode upon impact with double the force of the user's swing. I wish my Pip-Buck could do that, but this feature was banned within my Vault after it was discovered. The official story was that it drained the battery at an unsustainable and potentially dangerous rate, but I personally believe our elderly whore of an Overmare just didn't like the idea of everypony's Pip-Bucks doubling as decently-powerful weapons you couldn't take away without hassle.

What was I wearing, at the start of this tale? A Pip-Buck 7000, the deceptively-named twenty-first true all-around upgrade to the original 3000 model, which was, itself, the seventh upgrade made to the Pip-Buck 2000 model. It came in models of glossy pearl-white and absolute jet-black, with a deep and metallic purple for the highlights that would be a cold shade of gunmetal grey on a factory-standard Pip-Buck 3000.

This beautiful bastard had some pretty useful features. In no particular order… It has a Radio receiver. It has a Rad counter. It can turn the user invisible for up to five minutes per day every 24 hours. And it has some features that'll take several paragraphs to explain. Which is why I'll tell you about those when I'm done telling you about my home, Vault 177. Surely, the society of the area I come from should be more interesting and more important to the story than the gimmicky features of the marvel of magical engineering on my hoof. Though, to tell you the truth, I've always been a fan of both, and I've always looked down on the school of thought that says the 'Cool Stuff' in a sci-fi story should be mere window dressing compared to the same old generic pony interaction and relationship drama you'd see in any other story set in any other time period. When you tell amateur writers 'Not to focus on the cool stuff for too long', they hear 'Don't include any cool stuff', missing one of the biggest points of Sci-Fi stories, and how the new technologies of the future change our culture and society. In addition, I suppose my autobiography would certainly make a nice sci-fi story, were I to send it back in time to double as a cryptic warning for anypony paying attention.

Vaults… Sure, they're technically called Stables, but I've always considered that a rather stupid name. 'Stables' are what the pony species called Hotels before they were called Hotels, but after they were called Inns. Hotels, Inns, Stables, these are things you can enter and exit whenever you want. You go in, you rent a room, you sleep, and you leave when you're ready. Vaults… You don't leave Vaults. Vaults are reinforced boxes you put your valuables in, to protect them. Sure, you could say the pre-war idiots thought giving these bunkers such a cutesy name would make the idea sound more palatable, but what is more valuable to a nation than its ponies, and its future? I won't change every instance of Stable in my story to Vaults, but I probably should.

If you don't know what Vaults are, these 'Stables' are underground shelters. Really big underground shelters. Bunkers large enough to comfortably house somewhere between three thousand and a few hundred thousand ponies, maybe a million tops. Metal walls, metal ceilings, maginuclear reactors to power the lights, metal floors with tiled layers on top, pneumatically-driven extra-thick airlock doors that slide up to open and down to close, bedrooms with metal-bottomed beds bolted to the floors. I hear the Vault Project was originally supposed to save ponies, which made the sad fates so many vaults met even sadder, when you think about it. Due to incompetence, supply shortages, tight funding, bad supplies, miscommunications, Zebra saboteurs, and more, a lot of Vaults ended up with stupid gimmicks.

If you're somewhat lucky, your Vault ended up a perfectly-serviceable shelter and miniature society, and nothing particularly notable happened to you. If you're slightly less lucky, your Vault was only slightly supplied short in one specific, unimportant area. If you're a lot luckier, your Vault found itself with an abundance of some particular supply. Perhaps you got double the allocated amount of something, while another Vault got none of it. If you're lucky, but it's the kind of lucky that makes destiny feel like taking risks and betting your neck as the buy-in for nothing but a pot of entertainment, your Vault was supposed to research and advance some specific facet of technology, or your Vault's ponies naturally decided to do that on their own, and the technology DIDN'T go horribly wrong/right in a way that killed everypony or made them wish they were dead. If you're unlucky, something bad happened to your Vault after the Megaspells fell. If you're really unlucky, something bad was done to your Vault before the Megaspells fell, rigging the game from the start. I remember seeing one Vault that was just… missing a door. It had no door. Its door was missing. Its door, the super-big metal gear door that's supposed to protect you from the darkest and vilest magic possible, was not there. You could just walk into the Vault, and walk right back out of it filled with Taint, a vile and twisted type of dark magical radiation.

My Vault… Well, you could probably call us one of the lucky ones.

Stable 177. Or as I called it, Vault 177. It's one hundred and seventy higher than one of the luckiest numbers possible, one hundred higher than another of the luckiest numbers possible, and the one almost looks like a third seven. Does that make it twice as lucky as a simple seven would be, three times as lucky, or entirely unlucky? I'm not sure. I'd like to believe it's three times as lucky, but here's how it all went down. Also, screw it, I'm just going to say Vault from now on.

Vault 177 was one of between five hundred and twelve thousand super-big bomb shelters constructed before the war, each one designed to connect to its own isolated underground network of tunnels and rooms large enough to house a decently-sized city's population, and each one… Well, most of them were hidden in defensible, rarely-seen locations. Some were hidden beneath major cities, and some were hidden in inhospitable hellzones, like the Everfree Forest and the comparatively-tamer Whitetail Woods. It's funny how that dynamic changed around, after the war. Anyway, here's a quick rundown of the geopolitical complexities of the era that led up to the Great War. I could slowly insert scenes that drip-fed you information about the pre-war era while making you wait eighty chapters before telling you everything, or I could not do that.

Once upon a time, Ponies were awesome, and they invented cool stuff. Art, music, architecture, video games, the wheel, the cart, the forge, the sword, the axe, the rifle, the revolver, the enchanted gun, arcades, bowling alleys, restaurants of every stripe and gimmick, robots, toys, robotic toys, toys that looked like robots, philosophy, science, flight, and so much more. They also discovered medicine, oxygen, nitrogen, and the magical power of things early scholars didn't even consider elements, like kindness and trust. They made cities larger than any mountain, and monuments to their own greatness larger than any city. They broke limits, they went places, they did things. Natural kindness and naturally high IQs helped the three types of pony survive alone, before the three came together to form Equestria. They were the best. Let's be real here, they were the best. They went from speaking their first words and figuring out the wolf-killing power of sharp sticks to making automated factories in under three thousand years. Who else are you going to compare them to, Griffons? Dragons? What did they accomplish, with all their sharp fangs and sharp claws and supposed 'Realistic' cynical views of the world? They didn't make airships out of storm clouds so thickened in cloud factories that they could comfortably hold Unicorns and Earth Ponies and even heavy metal cannons and plasma miniguns inside them. They didn't take gems, the most common and useless thing on the planet, and make them worth more than gold through the power of equine innovation, creating wealth while the long-lived Dragons and supposed super-tough Griffons simply hoarded what they had. Dragons and Griffons didn't build a secret and highly-advanced space program that would have sent ponies to the moon approximately eight months after the day the Megaspells fell, had they never fell. Ponies did all of that, and more.

Ponykind prospered. And they needed more resources, so they traded with the other types of animals in their world, all the types that had achieved true sentience. Not to be confused with the fake kind of sentience cows and sheep can display. They can talk, but they can't talk to you. They might sound lifelike, but they aren't truly alive. They might react normally to assorted stimuli, but there is no true intelligence in their heads. Dogs are smarter than farm animals, even though one is able to talk and the other is not, which means it's about as wrong for your dog to eat the meat of a cow as it is for you to drink the milk of a cow or eat an orange. Vegetables, fruits, these things are alive in the same way non-sentient and non-sapient farm animals are alive.

Anyway, Zebras, who had not invented anything impressive in the thousands of years they'd been around for, had been blessed by fate, but not by evolution. They lived in a place where pretty much everything was edible. Not just the grass and what you planted and farmed, because fruit naturally grew on its own, animals took care of themselves, the weather moved on its own, and you could even eat many vines growing on assorted trees. They didn't need to become more than they were a few thousand years ago to survive, so they were lazy, violent, stupid savages that ate what they could and moved on to the next area to consume more resources there. When they came across land owned by other tribes, they would attack like the savage wild animals they truly were, even if the tribe was just a bunch of fillies and mares whose husbands had left to hunt animals or forage for food. They would even attack if they were facing foes stronger than themselves, because what else were they going to do with their free time, read a book? They never invented reading, as far as the entirety of Equestrian archaeology and history are aware. They warred with their tribal rivals and enslaved them, and traded their slaves to bigger tribes for food, which they ate rapidly. They had no self-control, and all foreign aid attempts to teach them how to properly farm food and care for soil failed. They were products of their environment: strong, fast, and stupid, with no family values and only a tribal mindset that held together small communities of equally-stupid animals. Many experts believe there's something about the lack of intelligence demanded in the area that stunts the mental development of foals, and that's why the rare Zebras intelligent enough to make their way to Ponyville are occasionally intelligent enough to hold a conversation. Anyway, ponies needed Coal, so they traded with Zebras and got coal, and everything was fine until Zebras decided to have the Zebra moment to end all Zebra moments. Zebras declared war on Ponykind, they sent soldiers to shoot up a school full of underaged foals, they bullshat themselves about Princess Luna being some kind of alien moon demon, and they fired the first Megaspells. If you don't know what Megaspells are, they're these dangerous technomagical devices that suck in spells and turn them up to 11. For example, a fireball spell barely strong enough to shatter a building's glass window would find itself powerful enough to char and scorch the entirety of Canterlot. Think of them like a guided missile, only so huge, you would need a rocket launcher the size of a pre-war observatory to fire them. And some kind of powerful terminal setup to program them to lock themselves on to a city, rather than a pony or vehicle. Megaspells were invented by Fluttershy, who had been assigned a secret superweapon project by Princess Luna herself. She subtly rebelled against her orders by filling the Megaspell spell-enhancing missiles with Healing Spells and firing one at a battlefield Ponykind had just taken from the Zebras, saving many wounded ponies and countless wounded and fleeing Zebras. It was one ultimate, supreme act of mercy, and it resulted in the Zebras turning around and continuing to fight on that battlefield. Then some Zebra spies snuck into Equestria and stole some Megaspells, filling them with a type of incredibly dangerous dark magic, something called Balefire. It's a violent green fire, almost alive with its hatred for life. This dangerous energy called taint radiates off it, like heat from a campfire. Or in this case, darkness and corruption from a dark and corrupt fire. Zebras looked into the future and saw a world bathed in the stuff, so they launched their Megaspells at Equestria, not realizing that some brave Ponies had stolen some Corrupted Megaspells back from the Zebras. We returned fire with those and some Megaspells filled with traditional combat spells, and the world ended in hellfire and death, just as the Zebras had predicted.

It would be poetically beautiful, if the Zebras hadn't claimed millions of innocent lives in their final act of stupidity as a species.

There, now you know how the world ended. Zebras were stupid and they ruined everything for everypony. Now, back to Vault 177…

Vault 177 was an ordinary pre-war Vault built near a town called Baltimare. Before the war, it was a peaceful and unremarkable port town. It had this experimental piece of tech in the water named Mr Trash Wheel, and it was the next step forward after Waste Reclaimers, but I'll tell you more about that when it's relevant. During the war, Baltimare was converted into a beacon of industry, a bastion of Titansteel, Power Armour, and Warship production. It saw a lot of refugees fleeing their war-ruined regions by boat, and a lot of those refugees found work in the factories, or the nearby mines. It also had a lot of coal refineries and weapon factories, a thriving community of artists and craftsponies with family-owned stores, and the finest university in Equestria. That little number had been founded by a mare named Moondancer, a student of Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns over in Canterlot, and despite its top-tier funding and its proud ownership of Equestria's largest library, it allowed any foals to attempt its tests and apply for entry, regardless of their economic backgrounds. Some beautiful and heartwarming rags-to-riches success stories had been written in that place. In this town, if you weren't here to run your own store and make a living after mastering some kind of skill at the Equestrian Foundation for Magic and Higher Learning, or after having mastered your skill elsewhere already, you were one of the rich ponies who owned or oversaw the factories, or one of the poor ponies who slaved away in them, and life was good… Until taxes, food-rationing, and government incompetence started to bite everypony in the flanks a little harder every day. The factories weren't unsafe or anything, they were just boring to work in. Still, nothing particularly major happened. It wasn't as if this was the starting point for a grand schism in which a lot of angry and dumb workers duped by a radical ideology that steadily grew in power decided to try and kill the rich, take their stuff, and become the new rich, planning on treating themselves better than the old rich. Something like that was going to happen at one point in history, but then Pinkie happened, so snipers were ready to kill the rabid mutts while they were in the middle of planting their bombs on assorted factories vital to the country's war engine. I don't know what genius decided to put a drug-fuelled future-seer in charge of the Department of Unpersoning, Killing, Mandatory Happiness, and Covering Things Up, but it's probably the biggest reason why Equestria lasted as long as it did during the war. After all, genetically-higher chances of being empathetic aren't exactly useful traits when you're fighting a defensive war against a foe that keeps pushing for total war. If only she was healthy enough to prevent the invention that put the planet on life support. Maybe she saw it, and knew it was the best possible future for Equestria, compared to a fate in which Zebras bled Equestria dry with a big, messy war under the cruel direction of its mad king. It must have hurt, making a decision like that. I've certainly made my share of decisions like that.

Like a bullet from a gun fired into the air, early-warning sirens that normally warned ponies of incoming potion bombing runs by potion-doped winged Zebras, rather than incoming balefire missiles, sent f**ktons of ponies rushing out of their homes, headed for the local Vault. If they were on the list, having either gotten a free ticket in some kind of sweepstakes or competition, having bought a place in the Vault for an exorbitant fee, or having been selected and granted a free ticket for service to the country, service to the town, great academic performance, or any other excuse, they got in. If not, they were directed to the other Vault in town, Vault 132, which accepted anypony who showed up. As long as they were a pony, though this was the case for all Equestrian vaults. After all, Zebras had their own secret Vaults in our land and colossal Vaults in their own land, and Griffons had been nothing but trouble for most of Equestria. They wouldn't be missed. The rare good nonpony migrants had been granted tickets to the Vault anyway, so it was fine.

The lucky, the rich, the intellectuals… The elite entered Vault 177 and went underground, and most of them were Unicorns. It was almost a routine after all the practice drills. You could almost pretend it was another ordinary day for that town, if you ignored the deaths of all the ponies who stayed aboveground to make sure everypony got in. I hope nopony decided to sleep through the sirens, thinking it was another practice drill. Anyway, we had ourselves a new life underground, to wait out the war as we waited for the dark magic radiation 'Upstairs' to fade away over time.

I wonder if whoever designed these Vaults planned on underground ponies reproducing like rabbits with something to prove. Well, that was life, for many years. After all, Ponykind would need more ponies when the Vaults opened and ponykind was ready to repopulate, reclaim, and rebuild Equestria.

Our Vault was a normal one. We lived, we ate food from the Food Talisman and the Waste Reclaimer that used magic to turn crap into any sanitized and edible food you wanted, we drank water from the Water Talisman that produced clean drinking water, we fricked, we got watched engaging in sideways breakdancing by the Overseer - a mare selected by Stable-Tec to rule over this population of ponies and live in a designated official-looking school headmaster-ish room with walls full of screens, though we decided this Overseer and her unlimited power should be kept in check by a council of genuine intellectuals, artists, and free thinkers chosen by the ponies of our home based on their contributions to Pre-War Equestria and the Vault - and we eventually died, but our many foals lived on, and so did the many foals they would have in time. Nothing particularly noteworthy or interesting happened, unless you count the impressive advances in science our dedicated Technological Sector that began calling itself the 'Tech-Sec' developed, such as the Pip-Buck upgrades or this one thing called a 'Maginuclear Reactor'. Imagine nine washing machines together, in a cubic formation, and now imagine one big box that size, with wires coming out of it. Imagine that inside it, absurdly tiny chunks of this weird magical ore called uranium are being pulled off from the main chunk and pulled apart, unleashing the insane levels of power trapped within said metal, along with incredibly dangerous energy called Radioactivity. Around that Uranium, there's a shell of magic that transmutes the intense heat and deadly radioactivity into electricity, and wires send that electricity around the Vault to power the lights and stuff better than our old and traditional magical reactor ever could. These things were so powerful, we had to make bigger, better, and more advanced batteries just to store the excess electricity!

And nothing ever went wrong, if you can believe it. Things would go wrong, eventually, but not just yet. For the longest time, our Vault was just… boring.

Well… There was this one hallway. One hallway miles underground, which stretched further and longer than any other hallway in the entire Vault, a hallway many miles long with no side rooms or turns, a hallway that ended in the usual sliding pneumatically-powered doors you saw in the Vaults. It looked so ordinary, despite how out of place it was… And that just made it even more unusual.

This door was a door nopony could open. It had no controls, no easily-pressed Open Button, not even a puzzle that would somehow open it hidden somewhere in the Vault. Perhaps its Open Button was on the other side, ponies speculated. But what could be on the other side?

Naturally, it was a very exciting thing to talk about when you weren't fr*cking, or shooting at the Vault Shooting Range, or reading in the Vault Library, or working out in the Vault Gym, or swimming in the Vault Pool, or eating in the Vault Mess Hall, or sparring in the Vault Duelling Arenas or the Vault Dojo, or doing cool science shit in the Vault Laboratories, or "Polluting the liquid" in the Vault Swimming Pool, or creating something for fun/prestige/extra cash. Sure, the stuff was practically meaningless now, but the jangle of bits still sounded nice.

And that one mysterious door seemed to be enough to satisfy the universe's appetite for weirdness in this area, so nothing weird happened for decades.

What could be behind that door? Weapons? Gold? A portal to another world? A second Vault, full of naked mares? Or perhaps, some gigantic magical device that would purge all the dark magical energy, all the Taint, from the world outside, and get rid of the thick cloud layer those cowardly Enclave Pegasi left us with, and more! It didn't really matter at this point, but the Vault's Secret Door was a fun thing to talk about.

For years, for decades, for centuries, life was good.

Then, everything changed when Vault 40 attacked.

That was where the Vault's Secret Door led. Another Vault, nestled in some defensible mountains, had been designed to house Equestria's military in this region and keep it well-fed, trained, and ready to help make Equestria great again as soon as its main door opened. Overstuffed with weapons and supplies, and no entertainment media besides war-themed books, it was almost as if somepony had set this Vault up to be what they thought the ultimate Badass Vault would be. A Ruler Vault to house Equestria's scientists and artists and rich idiots, and a Soldier Vault to house the soldiers who'd fight to protect them in the new world. It should have been a match made in heaven. However, at some point, they had undergone a coup. The Vault's Overseer was dead, and an excessively violent warmongerer had seized control of that population. Instead of training at a reasonable pace and waiting for Stable-Tec to send the All-Clear Signal that would allow the Vault's main door to open, he wanted to institute draconian training methods until he had an army he felt could conquer anything, even whatever horror he was certain lied in wait behind his Vault's Mysterious Door.

It would probably make this a better story if I waxed lyrical about horrific initiation rituals, training methods so risky they became inefficient, experimental brainwashing technology, and a secret room where young soldier mares and colts were 'Trained to resist torture' by being 'Used' by the military's corrupt higher-ups, but… This Vault was boring. It trained its ponies for combat roles, and if you sucked at those, you found yourself getting a combat support role or a weapon-making role, and if you sucked at too much at everything, you were shot. You feared getting shot, so you tried very hard not to suck, and life went on. Don't worry; we'll see plenty of spectacularly disastrous Vaults later on.

Anyway, Vault 40 sent in some Heavy Troopers decked out in standard-issue Earth Pony T-51e Power Armour (I'll tell you about that in a later chapter) and they made their way to the Overseer's office to make demands. It didn't go that well. How would you expect a war between classically-trained soldiers and academic masters of magic with a considerable tech advantage to go? They had suits of Power Armour, and we had powerful Battlemages in our Stable Security. Those things held up against bullets, not fireballs hot enough to melt you inside your armour. They had outdated Pip-Bucks, and we had modernized and upgraded models with more gimmicky features than you could shake a stick at. They had rocket launchers, and we had shielding spells, mind-controlling spells, space-manipulation spells, spells that spawn fireballs atop the head of targets in your line of sight, each one descending slowly and blasting on impact with anything, unleashing double the heat and force of standard rockets.

I wish I had some of those Battlemages in my army, when the time came for me to lead one. But I'm briefly and purposefully getting ahead of myself in this paragraph, to build up hype for when I eventually get to that part of the story.

The war ended when Vault 40 had no remaining adult survivors, only a feckton of locked rooms full of hiding and heavily-armed foals we decided to take in and care for, after disarming them. Don't blame us, their Vault's adults were the ones who romanticized 'Fighting to the last' as the ultimate ideal a pseudomilitary organization could follow, even when it meant you left your kids behind with nopony left to protect or raise them. Anyway, we took their vault's stuff, and integrated it into our own. We didn't try to actively erase their old culture or anything, we just raised them as our own with our own ideals. 'Excellence for the sake of excellence', 'Science for all', and all that. Some took to it quite well; some hated it and wished their parents had won the war so we'd be forced to build better guns for them as slaves or something, but nopony was stupid enough to cause a fuss. Anyway, life went on, more foals were had, and decades passed.

Centuries passed.

Our Stable Security got less good at their jobs, and less moral.

Rations were reduced for non-workers, which meant if you ate what you were given by your masters, you were given fewer calories than you needed to survive. But if you had multiple foals and stole most of a different one's ration each day, you'd have plenty of food. Rations were traded like money, crime grew organized, and things got bad.

And to keep them from speaking out against, or replacing, our Overseer, our Intellectual Council was compromised. Actual experts and intellectuals were replaced with phonies better at faking intelligence and sucking the Overmare off. Wearing the masks of mindless Yes-Ponies, corrupt backstabbers rose to power and began to give their friends and family jobs they weren't qualified for. Critics of the current system found themselves accused of all kinds of awful things by random paid-off liars who'd say anything to secure more food for themselves or their families.

Speaking of the Council, I wonder… What would you call the system of government we had, before it became a sham of a civilization where lower-level ponies were forced to give up on life, and could often go their whole lives without ever finding their Cutie Marks, even if they escaped the culls month after month because a sufficient number of ponies beneath them were culled before them for every month they spent alive? An all-powerful Autocrat, restrained by a council of elites, each one either a pioneer in their field or simply highly knowledgeable about their field, or a beloved and brilliant writer, or our current Stable Security Chief. Or that one painter we had on the Council at one point. He was weird. In any case, the council leaders of old were not democratically elected. The founders of the institution made their case to the Overmare of old, in front of their Vault's ponies, and they argued for it so eloquently that they convinced her to give them power over matters related to their assorted fields of expertise. In the event that two or more ponies wanted to join the council, and wanted the same "Head of X" title in their council, they would debate over who knew more and who was best suited to the role. A general consensus had to be reached among the council, when it came to accepting new members and replacing the old. Was that democracy, when the council voted to pass something after it failed to reach a general consensus among themselves? Or was it Oligarchy? Was that Aristocracy, Plutocracy, or Technocracy? Techno-Aristocracy? A Techno-Pluto-Oligarchist Council, keeping an unelected and selected Tyrannical autocrat in check. Then again, the position of Overseer was an inheritable one, so perhaps Monarch was a better option. Yes, like the Kings, Queens, Princes, and even Princesses of old. A Democratic Techno-Pluto-Oligarchist Monarch, that's something you don't see every day, and it's something I would never get to see, because the system had dissolved into a Kraterocracy, rule of the 'Strong'. Only instead of actual strength or intelligence, your cunning and your ability to stab your rivals in the back were what got you power, along with your ability to suck the Overmare's non-existent cock. Then again, Katerocracies didn't typically have undertones of Hoof-licker-ocracy.

Anyway, when we realized we were overpopulating both Vaults, we knew something had to change. And I'm not exactly convinced the best changes were made under the watchful eye of our supposedly glorious Overmare, or her successor. And the Council, at that point, was unwilling to oppose either of them.

By the way, quick note for the sake of clarification: The job of Vault Leader, the one whose job it is to watch everypony, is called an Overseer. Male ones are called Overstallions and female ones are called Overmares.

Culls were instituted. If you sucked too much at something important, or you didn't show enough talent at what your Cutie Mark made you good at, or you got caught speaking out against the rulers too often, you were culled. You know, killed.

If you were a criminal, you were killed. If the Elites couldn't think of a use for you. If you were a criminal the ruler and her little party of helpers and conspirators didn't like, you were publically executed. If you were disabled, you were killed.

Ponies were shuffled around and moved at the Overseer's whim almost weekly. If you were one of the current generation's 'Elite', or a previous generation's 'Elite', you got to live on one of the higher levels, closer to Vault 177's main door and the Overmare's office. If not, you were moved into the lower levels. Crappy rooms near things like generators went to crappy ponies, and as the years went by, lower-level ponies in sleeping bags and on bedrolls started to outnumber ponies in beds. The threat of getting killed, or worse, getting sent to a lower level of the Vault, where you would be tortured and then killed by ponies who hated the 'Elites', kept the upper-level ponies who could have stopped this fearful and in line with the Overmare's goals. After all, as she said when she justified this to herself and her followers, they and their way of life would be destroyed if they allowed the lower-class ponies, who easily outnumbered them a hundred to one, to seize power.

Any weapons you couldn't bullshit Stable Security into letting you keep, such as baseball bats or tire irons, were taken from the ponies of the lower levels, and hoarded in the upper levels. If you wanted a gun, you had to "Earn" yourself a promotion to the middle levels, where they were allowed crappy old pistols, and nothing stronger than crappy old pistols. If you wanted the 'Right' to own sniper rifles, assault rifles, and anti-tank rifles, or laser and plasma pistols, or anything like that, and you wanted the right to play around with them at the Vault's Shooting Ranges, you had to be an Elite, preferably one in Stable Security.

Vault 40, having been annexed, became empty space. Empty space that was quickly filled up with our poorest. Our jobless, and our hopeless. Their Overmare's Office found itself getting a new owner and professional perpetual voyeur: Stainless Steel, the leader of Stable Security. Away from the all-seeing eyes of our Overmare, this vault was where he found the opportunity to really indulge in his sadistic tendencies, and to speak out against him or what he did to some poor soul's daughter this week was to speak out against the Overmare who trusted him completely. I'm not sure why this arrangement was made between the two, but it wouldn't surprise me if Steel had something on the Overmare, or had threatened to organize and execute a coup and run solo unless she did as he wanted. Then again, maybe she just liked it when her ponies were hurt. It's hard to speculate on which monster is worse than the other when you barely knew anything about either one.

Something called an Expansion Program was established, when the overpopulation crisis got even worse. Tough worker ponies from the lower levels thoughtcriminals who wanted to be spared from the Culls were sent to a certain wing of the Vault's lowest level, which was emptied out for them a week ahead of time. When the penal colony ponies had gotten to their new home, the heavy steel doors to that area were permanently sealed, and the ponies began to get to work drilling through the Vault Walls, with a supply of spare metal ready to be spread through the tunnels to serve as new walls and floors. These ponies were tasked with digging deeper and deeper underground, to expand the Vault. Some ponies died in tunnel collapses, some ponies died from overexposure to soil and rock tainted with dark magic, and some ponies died of exhaustion after being forced to work almost non-stop, with few breaks, long days, and short sleep sessions. This became where the thieves, repeated minor rule-breakers, critics of the government, and other undesirables were sent, to die in the name of expanding the Vault. And whenever the Expansionists found themselves running low on members, the Overmare would invent new, stupid laws for the sake of bolstering their membership, such as 'It is illegal to wear silk-laced clothing on a Tuesday' and 'No belts are permitted to be worn on a Monday'. Or, the Overmare would simply claim she cast a future-seeing spell and knew one pony was about to turn into a criminal, and that locking him away pre-emptively was the only way to stop him from doing something stupid like putting bombs in the generator room and detonating everything our Vault needed to survive.

Through it all, the Overmare insisted that some day, the Expansion Program within the new Miner's Quarters would expand the Vault so much, we could all go back to the glory days when the place didn't feel so overcrowded and you didn't have to book your sessions with in the Vault's Leisure Activity rooms months in advance. Or years in advance, in the case of the Vault's lower-levelled rooms. Speaking of which, higher-level ponies were allowed to trump the pre-made bookings of lower-levelled ponies when it came to activity rooms like the libraries, gyms, and workshop rooms. You can guess how many violent crimes against smug time-stealing bastards this resulted in.

When our Overmare died and everypony tried to hide their desire to celebrate, her replacement promised us changes.

We should have known this meant she'd make the rich 'Elites' and their foals immune to the Culls, ruining the whole point of the system by allowing rich wastes of resources to dress themselves and their many foals as extravagantly as they desired while lower-level ponies struggled to find enough cloth to make bedrolls and sleeping bags. Speaking of cloth, I forgot to mention it, but we had a Cloth Talisman, just like our Water and Food Talismans. Infinite supplies of each, sure, but they're slowly-dispensed infinite supplies of each, and if you overtax them for even a second, you increase the likelihood that they'll break. While the ponies of many Vaults never changed out of their Vault Suits, thick and fashionable blue jumpsuits, our Vault's ponies thought we were better than that, so we put our Vault Suits in the back of our cupboards and dressed ourselves differently. The upper-level ponies dressed themselves in absurd fashions, elaborate costumes that took long periods of time to get into and out of, while the lower-level ponies dressed in tough work clothes, in the case of workers, and rags, in the case of those who weren't granted any better by upper management.

One more thing… The overpopulation was starting to get so bad that there were more workers and apprentices than there were resources to go around. Sure, our Vaults recycled a lot, but that didn't pull new supplies out of thin air. Some research was being done to try and open portals into other worlds, which we could expand into and take resources from, but that hadn't borne any fruit before the day I left the Vault, no pun intended.

Into this lit powder keg waiting to blow, I was born.

My name is Sunrise Stardust. I am a red Unicorn with bright golden eyes, and my horn is framed with the frontal part of my mane, straightly combed hair that fell forwards, streaked with horizontal zigzags of orange, gold, and red, cut into jagged ends. The upper-back part of my mane spikes up and backwards, an orange array of combed-out spines with golden centers. Running down the back of my head and neck is the last part of my mane, combed-out and straightened spines of purple hair with one gold streak. That gold streak has an orange streak running through its upper half, curving up and stopping short just before it meets the end of my hair. As for my tail, it's a long, straight, and wide curtain of purple hair with one orange streak and one wider golden streak running down its length, and it frames my butt quite nicely. As a foal, I somehow got it into my head that the fact that my tail naturally resembles Twilight Sparkle's in shape simply must mean that I'm destined for great things. I won't say I spend a while in the mirror each day making sure my mane spikes properly in the way I want it, while letting my tail fall in its natural manner, but I also won't deny that, because it's true. Twinned piercings run through the ends of my ears, two titanium sticks with a separate diamond on either end. Upon my flanks, my Cutie Mark can be seen. I got it reasonably early, and it's a sun, with wavy rays of orange light radiating from it. But it isn't just any old sun, it's a spiralling yin-yang of white-mooned purple darkness and a red sun's golden dawn, representing cycles, changes, the sun and moon, conflicting concepts and their synthesis, the skies above and all within them, and above all... Magic. Well, that's everything I can read into it when I look at it, but I'm pretty sure it mostly means magic.

I am a direct descendant of Moondancer, though to be fair, a lot of ponies from my Vault are. Unfortunately, I did not inherit an incredibly-powerful laser weapon, a mysterious and powerful magical weapon passed down through the family line for generation, or an even better spell only the 'Worthy' and 'Chosen' can cast, or a family of spells only those of my family line can cast, or even a seemingly-normal hand-me-down family heirloom of a book that's actually the key to a hidden segment of the Vault with portals to any of the hopefully-infinite worlds out there, providing infinite food, space, and resources for all. My hobbies are studying magic, studying the important sciences(And to be honest, studying some fields more than others. My overall knowledge of science probably isn't the best in the universe, all things considered), caring for my room's small planter of flowers and pretending that's gardening, writing music to channel my incredible rage constructively, playing that music on the electromagical guitar, sparring, engaging in magical duels, studying pre-war tactics, reading about pre-war history, and reading about fictional worlds that turned out better than my one. My life's ambition is to learn from the past, bring Equestria back to life, and make Equestria great again. And to become awesome, of course.

And to carry out that ambition, I made a plan.

 _Step one, Study harder than anypony else._

 _Step two, Make some friends in high and low places._

 _Step three, Become a rockstar._

 _Step four, Improvise and adapt as necessary until I've turned my gang of loudmouthed juvenile delinquents, its secret supporters, its even more secret rule-abiding members and sleeper agents, my adoring fanbase, and everypony who ideologically agrees with me into the greatest army the Equestrian Wasteland has ever seen._

 _Step five, Reconquer Baltimare, the key to bringing an industrial revolution and civilization to a blasted hellscape where these things lie as forgotten as the names of the pony skeletons that still litter the ground in some cities._

 _Step six, Avenge Equestria._

 _Step seven, Improvise and adapt as necessary until Equestria is great again._

Quite a good plan, if I do say so myself. Sure, I dreamed it up when I was a young foal and wrote it in an imaginary book with an imaginary quill in my own mind's imaginary bookcase, but if I wasn't going to dedicate my life to that foalhood dream, what else was I going to dedicate my life to? What else could I do in such an environment, besides keeping my head down, trying not to get killed by bad policies out-of-touch rulers enforced with the aid of corrupt 'Law' enforcement, hoping that I survived long enough to have foals, and hoping that my foals did the same as I did before our population passed the point where our supplies could sustain us all, or even any of us at all?

Long nights spent studying in the Library until I fell asleep, missed parties and lost friendships, pretending to get glowing hornboners in class when I was actually performing magical control exercises and pretending to get them so often that ponies eventually stopped taking so notice… almost constantly playing illegally-shared and downloaded audiobooks and playing them so often, I must have heard the voice of narrators more than my own voice and the voices of my parents… talking to troubled and good-natured ponies the system was failing and pushing into a short-lived life of delinquency and eventual servitude as an Expansionist, and getting those troubled ponies to join my gang of 'Badasses' that didn't really do much of anything except posing, posturing, protecting the weak kids from bullies, and yelling "Dark Stars rule!" now and then… skipping out on school to spend more time in the library and the firing range, where I threw spells around until I had fully mastered them and the underlying mechanics of magic… I eventually started skiving off school to dedicate my days to magic and convincing the teacher to let me into the Night Schools with the poorer kids… and eventually, it was time for me to start sucking up to the 'Elites' and pretending that my life's ambition was to leave my 'Silly and juvenile' gang-leader ways behind and become one of them, metaphorically sucking them off by pretending their decadent, wasteful, detrimental lifestyles could ever be anything a foal like me could ever consider admirable…

It was hard.

For one thing, my family was less than useless. They weren't just useless, they were an active detriment to my goals, and the life I would lead if I gave up on them. My life actually would have been easier if they'd both died during childbirth, or gotten Cancer and died at some point in my youth. I'd like to tell you they were just old-fashioned closed-minded idiots who hated the upper-level ponies and my ambition to become one as part of my Stable Saviour Plan. I'd like to tell you they had good intentions, but were out-of-touch idiots who thought trying to break my spirit and resign myself to a life spent with them would make me happier when my dreams inevitably – according to them – failed and I had to spend my life with them anyway. I'd like to say they had good intentions, or some sort of redeeming feature. Maybe even more than one redeeming feature to share between them. The truth is that they were much worse.

They were low-class ponies, like myself. And jobless, like I was during my younger years. Though unlike myself, they were both jobless for pretty much their entire lives, having both tried working once each in their lives and crumbled under the stress, giving up for good. And unlike myself, instead of hungering for a meaning in life, they hungered for meaningless things they considered meaningful. Most of all, they hungered for social status. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, they were acting. Playing the part of poor, precious, put-upon parents who tried The Hardest(TM) for their foals and do The Most(Patent Pending) out of anypony on their level, acting like appearance-obsessed upper-classers in a low-class level that should have been a place free of such pretentiousness and two-faced dishonesty. They would regularly emphasize and exaggerate how difficult commonly-done and simple little things like getting laid without their respective spouse finding out, cooking rationed food ingredients into acceptable meals, and taking their foals to school were. Even though, on many days, they didn't bother with those things. They would also whine to friends they secretly loathed – and who, of course, secretly loathed them in turn – about how hard it was to be a parent of a 'Robot' like me, and they had similarly awful nicknames for the rest of my siblings, let me tell you. To try and earn some precious sympathy points, they would lie about things I did, things my siblings did, and so on. Suddenly, I went from a quiet and mature foal to a horrifying and violent brute who'd terrorize my parents behind locked doors, and my habit for leaving the classroom and hitting the Technological Sector's Digital Book Machines for some fresh downloads became a habit of running into the lower levels and exchanging illegal favours for drugs. Yes, really. That isn't hyperbole, they truly were that dishonest, that manipulative, that obsessed with shallow appearances, and that willing to throw away the reputation of their own foals for some worthless, meaningless status. I got into more than a few fights in the hallways over whatever bullshit rumour my parents had been spreading about me today. Still, I doubt anypony above the age of twenty was really fooled by their whining about how hard their lives were, and how much harder I supposedly made it by being a smart foal they hated. Most likely, as the ponies of their level did what little parenting my birth parents did every day and then some, they didn't think of these things as particularly hard, only that they were particularly hard for my birth parents. It's almost funny. They thought they were so much smarter than those around those they secretly detested with a hatred they also prided themselves on for some reason, but they were too stupid to notice that everypony else secretly detested them far more.

In their heads, my parents were pitiable and perfect paragons of virtue who'd been dealt a miserable lot in life, and anypony who got in the way of that fantasy of theirs was a monster out to make them feel even worse than they already did. Of course, they were the monsters, terrified of what might happen if anypony found out that their absurd 'Sad pathetic ponies' act was a lie. To try and add some credibility to the lies they'd tell, they would sabotage me and my work, try to keep me up all night to sabotage my performance in school(I sometimes suspect they are the cause of my little 'Sleeping problem'), make up bullshit reasons for me to be denied the right to leave the house and eat dinner that day, removing the burden on them to cook it... And all the while, they would lie to my face about what they were and what they were doing. They even tried to get sympathy points from me, the one they were hurting most of all! It really screwed with my head when I was a foal, but after many years of self-care, I'd mostly gotten over it. Mostly.

On some miserable nights spent trying to stay awake and pay attention in class with my little 'Time problem' screwing me over(I have problems with falling asleep when I want to, and I have a habit of uncontrollably falling asleep at inopportune times. And in terms of my physical and mental capabilities, I do a lot better during the day and a lot worse during the night. Nopony's sure why that last part is a thing that exists and happens to me, not even our Vault's resident medical experts. Better for it to screw me over during unimportant lessons trying to teach me stuff I already know than during magical training, where a random collapse could seriously injure or even kill me, right?), the temptation to give up manifested as the temptation to give up on my dreams and just coast like all the other markless and lifeless low-level foals had done so long ago, all the miserable bodies waiting for death who'd lost faith in the world, their ability to ever get a Cutie Mark and find anything that made their lives worth living, the Vault's social system, and Ponykind's ability to ever change that system without war, bloodshed, purges, and worse.

On some miserable nights spent exhaustedly striking the ground in frustration after having failed to master a spell or magical trick too many times in a row, and worse ones spent in the hospital after f*cking up high-level spells so badly I almost died, while my beloved parents bitched at me about what a disappointment and embarrassment they claimed I was for them when I hurt myself in this way, the temptation to give up manifested as the temptation to steal somepony's gun and shoot myself in the head.

Not any thoughts a foal should probably have, I know. Thoughts about killing my own parents - and then myself - probably aren't thoughts a foal should have, either. And I suppose the same went for the temptation to let myself go stir-crazy, or develop 'A Stable Mind' as some cutesy piece of shit had decided to name it, and start killing Stable Security ponies until I got killed.

Getting some illegal home-brewed alcohol from the lower floors and smuggling it into the rooms of my parents, and then calling Stable Security to get them caught with it, was one of the best decisions I ever made. What a way to celebrate my tenth birthday! They weren't killed or anything – Unfortunately – But myself and my siblings (I'm going to be honest with you, I often forget that I ever even had any of those mind-fu**ed parent-loving little bastards for siblings in the first place) were scattered to the four winds, so that we could be placed with better families. Well, I was placed with an elderly piece of shit, who at least had the good sense to trade me to some other family. Though to be traded away in return for some pre-war trading cards, of all things! What an insult. In any case, I found myself placed with two bright young things, Pheonix Flame and Volcanic Flare, two kind-hearted ponies with a loving family I made sure to send regular packages of supplies back to, later on in my life, when I'd moved on up in the world.

Oh, right, I forgot to mention this, but alcohol is supposed to be illegal in my Vault. Plenty of middle-class ponies drink it anyway, plenty of lower-class ponies smuggle it down to even lower classes and trade it away for assorted goods and services, and plenty of higher-class ponies are "Professional Advice-Givers" that are actually magically-gifted crafters of premium-quality alcohol that finds itself all over the Vault soon enough. How do ponies with alcohol bottles for Cutie Marks keep that sham up? Stable Security only objects to the lower classes brewing alcohol, because they're shit at it, due to having to make do with crappy and improvised nonmagical equipment. The upper classes… Well, if they send regular gifts of "Old, dusty, hand-me-down" bottles of premium alcohol to Stable Security, they'd get the brutes to look the other way.

It was also kind of funny how, once my parents were cast down into the Vault's lower levels and known through my Vault's level and their new one as alcohol-drinkers, they became the detested ones, while myself and my siblings became the poor, precious, pitied ponies who everypony needed to be seen being hugged. Stories abounded of my parents being vicious drunken bastards who beat me and my siblings for fun and molested all three of my sisters together. The ponies of this Vault's level were fickle idiots, of course, because that culture tended to develop in the lower levels. Something about the place turned supposed adult ponies into shallow, gossipy hens, constantly trying to socially assassinate each other and throw each other under the tank treads so everypony would be too distracted by trying to be seen hating the demon of the week to notice any hen's own dirty laundry.

I'd be lying if I said that my parents were the only things holding me back, and that I would magically, instantly become amazing and a bastion of absolute physical and mental stability and reliability once my 'Emotional Training Weights' were removed.

I wish it worked that way. Oh holy light above, I wish it worked that way. I wish I got more out of it than an understanding that sometimes, when it doesn't mean compromising anything important, you have to lie to save your own sorry hide.

I wish my reflexes to dodge this thrown metal dinner plate and duck under that swing made me an invincible god when it came to martial arts. I wish my finely-honed ability to read ponies was always reliable, and would never give me false positives regarding the trustworthiness of others and the likelihood that I was being lied to. I wish I didn't have to expend serious effort to keep it together when things go off the rails. And I wish I was emotionally ready to bear my heart and soul to another pony and trust that pony unconditionally, without having to fake a smile and pretend there's nothing more to me than the good I've done, my skills and accomplishments, and the good I want to do with my life.

I wish my foalhood left me better-adjusted than the average pony, and I wish it didn't make me feel like a wounded actor pretending he's fine so the show can go on as if everything's fine. I got better at hiding my pain quickly. Learning to handle my pain took longer. With a lot of effort, meditation, and thinking about my life, I think I've gotten myself to… ninety six percent, perhaps? I'm not really sure how to describe it. I don't get flashbacks any more, and I don't randomly get pissed off at random shit out of the blue either. It feels like there's a weight inside that I carry with me, and I've gotten better at carrying it over time. And after many years of dealing with it, I don't notice it much. I'd like to say that I don't notice it at all, but I still do. It's still there, even now.

Furthermore, that wasn't the only thing holding me back. I'm going to be honest with you, I am a naturally lazy pony. I don't know if this is something I developed over time or if it was always with me from the start, but I love sitting around and doing nothing. Even curling up with a good book and slowly reading it for fun, instead of speed-reading it for the information, is something I like to do when I feel really lazy. And while I love challenges, and fights, and f***ing, and other things that get my heart pumping, I've always felt adventure, true adventure, was something best experienced on the safe side of an old page marked with ink. I truly, honestly love being lazy, even though I don't like how disgusted I feel with myself after doing it. Developing that sense of disgust at laziness was what got me to stop lazing around every so often and "Woe is me!"-ing around the place. Despite everything I had already accomplished, and everything I wanted to accomplish, there were many days when I just wanted to give up. My parents certainly didn't help, with how they tried to sabotage my youngest years, or how they emotionally sabotaged me for the rest of my life.

It was pain. It was heck.

And through it all, I had one friend I could truly count on: Books.

Books didn't care who you were. Books didn't care where you read them, or what time you read them at. If you had some free time, you could duck into a nearby bathroom and pull a book out of your saddlebag, or read some downloaded digital copies of books on your Pip-Buck. Books wouldn't get mad at you for opening them up at six in the morning, before the rest of your family had woken up, and reading them in silence. Books didn't mind if you had to read the same piece of information multiple times and check out what other books had said about the same subjects before you truly understood what the books wanted you to know. Books didn't mind if you stopped listening to them halfway through a sentence, due to having something else to deal with forced upon you, and you didn't get a chance to hear that book's voice again until you turned on your Pip-Boy in some bathroom stall. And if a book turned out to be garbage, full of misinformation and lies, you could throw it away and find better ones, without having to worry about those books coming to resent you, or try and get revenge upon you. Books didn't have personas to keep up, masks to hide behind, or fears of getting put down. The way I saw it, and the way I still see it… Books are like wishes made not on shooting stars, but on ink and parchment by their writers, and they would tell you what they wanted to tell you, no matter what.

Sure, physical copies of books were luxuries, ordered in advance and borrowed from the Library more for status than anything. Even books from the Reference Section (That bit of the Library with books you aren't allowed to take outside of the Library) could be rented for the right under-the-table transaction. I got my books from this place in the Technological Sector, the Tech Sec, where there was this open-to-the-public terminal, filled with digital copies of books. Fiction and nonfiction, modern and outdated… You could even submit new digital files you'd written yourself (With the aid of an old-fashioned Pip-Buck Keyboard you had to plug in using a normally-covered slot in the side, or with the aid of the Pip-Buck 7000's illusionary keyboard display) to the Book Horses, the owners of this unnamed book terminal. If your digital book was good, it would be published on that terminal, for all to copy.

And due to the rules against low-level ponies going too high above their level without a pre-approved permit, and the cultural stigma against going too far below your level, and the considerable health risk in going too far below your level and getting jumped by a poor pony with nothing to lose but the tire iron in his mouth, many ponies on assorted medium and low levels had downloaded large quantities of books onto their Pip-Buck, to then redistribute at will, either for free or in return for goods and services. Remember this, it'll be important later on.

Anyway, that was my foalhood. First, I was the detested foal of two open frauds, who accidentally made ponies think to themselves, "If these idiots can't stand him, he must be REALLY bad!". My only reliable friends were books. And then, when the fakes had changed their tune on me, I made two new friends, though they were often too busy with their studies to talk to me. And that was refreshing, to live with a family who cared about their studies. In any case, books were still my oldest and most reliable friends. It was lonely. Crushingly lonely, and in a few ways, having two almost-friends live with you made it feel… Worse? The idea of having family members I cared about was so alien to me, I still wasn't sure if I liked it or not by the time I got my Cutie Mark.

My Cutie Mark…

MY one. My Cutie Mark, the best one.

I made up for the pain that was my foalhood in my teenage years, when I blossomed like a motherf*cking sunflower. Or… Bloomed, I suppose. Either way, when I got that mark, everypony knew it: I was rising in rank, and I was headed for the top.

Making sure to stay reasonably fit, but not too fit, while dedicating my whole foalhood to magic without dedicating too much time, emotion, or favour to any particular aspect of magic above any other aspects finally paid off when I got myself a Cutie Mark in Magic, the best possible Cutie Mark for a great hero to have! I don't know if I really cheated fate out of a great Cutie Mark or if I only found myself developing an affinity for magic and a desire to get a Cutie Mark in Magic because I was destined to get one anyway, but either way, hooray for me, I finally got some confirmation that my dreams could be possible. And finally, I could branch out, make friends, cheer ponies up, learn the sciences and the arts, take up what passed for 'Gardening' around here, learn to sing, learn to play the guitar, learn to make a speech, and learn to lead an army without having to worry about getting a Cutie Mark that doomed me to a life spent with a great talent for one of those things and no talent in anything else.

I was a genius, according to everypony else. They called me Gifted. I claimed I found it easy, when that would endear me to 'Elites' with a serious hard-on for natural talent, and I said that I'm good at this and that but it's my hard work that got me where I was today when I was around 'Elites' who wanted to believe they were also in the lap of luxury thanks to hard work and natural, inherent virtue.

I was able to form a Study Group, where ponies from multiple Levels met up together and studied alongside me. Through discussions and debates with my peers, this gradually grew into my group, and the fillies and colts of powerful ponies started to join it, and get absorbed into it. Whenever I felt I needed to grow my reach in one floor, I would instruct one of my older students to leave my group and form a group of their own in these areas, to spread my teachings. Politics, personal opinions, and social standing did not matter to the pony I sought to present myself as, and they should not matter to my students. Knowledge is for everypony, I preached as I aided ponies in learning subjects their teachers had intentionally failed to teach. The teachers, I gathered, had hoped to ensure some students would fail, so there would be less room on the metaphorical chopping blocks for the foals of teachers.

While my friends in low places continued to grow and expand my Dark Stars gang to lay the groundwork for my revolution, in return for some 'Misplaced' supplies that turned up in a certain mid-level locker with a perpetually 'Lost' key I'd destroyed long ago, I got the lower classes to respect me and see me as one of their own while I worked even harder to get the middle classes to want me around, and I got the upper classes to want me when they heard stories of what a kind, considerate friend I could be, how loyally devoted I was to Equestria and the Vault, and what an absolute f**king riot I was at parties.

And I liked being wanted. I liked being loved. I'd be lying if I said an attention-starved ultra-stressed workhorse didn't love every minute he spent getting himself to stick in minds that saw hundreds of faces walk past them every day. I didn't just hit parties, I slammed into them with the force of a sentient freight train after three Atomic Cocktails laced with ground-up Vigorgio pills. I stayed up for ten minutes before bedtime every night thinking of witty responses to say to things I expected to hear from different Vault Dwellers, I wrote my own songs, I played up the 'Tortured emotional brooding artist full of barely-restrained angst and desire' angle when I was around mares who wanted that, and I played up the 'Absolute f*cking madpony who'd drink anything you bought for him' angle when I was around stallions who wanted that. My constitution was always pretty great, but thank f*ck for healing spells designed to purge alcohol's corrupting influence from the body, even the lingering traces of the poison and the damage it left. There was a stronger version of the spell that had you violently ultra-shit out not just the alcohol, but all of the assorted lingering bad shit in your body, in what those who cast the spell often called 'Waterfalls' and what I privately called 'A good reason to spend a week learning an enchantment-class spell that'd burn up and destroy anything that went too far down your throat before it hit your stomach'.

As far as the Vault's elites knew, they were all collectively seducing me away from my small-time low-cost life and training me to love the good life I'd hopefully do anything to keep. They liked having throwaway low-classers they could threaten to kick back down into the lower territories, to force that low-classer to do embarrassing, illegal, or even potentially life-threatening things, see. As far as the Vault's lower classes knew, I was the one who would get them a better life, and all they had to do was make sure my Dark Stars gang was big and bad enough for me by the time I turned sixteen.

Let me tell you, you haven't been to a real party until you've been to a party with hard-working middle-class and upper-middle-class students dangerously stressed out over their performance in school, their apprenticeship performances, and their potential upcoming deaths.

Through my songs, I spread my ideas and ideals. My gang of Dark Stars carved an ever-larger chunk out of the Vault's criminal element every day, because starving ponies would do anything for extra supplies. How did criminal activity go undetected in a Vault full of magical security cameras, some may ask? Simple, the 'Master Criminal' pseudo-mob bosses down there had maps of blind spots and unmonitored hallways where contraband could be exchanged, and criminal factions gained even more power if they operated in Vault 40. Plus, the areas the Miners dug out and fortified didn't have any cameras yet. Finally, the Overmare had her imposing wall of screens jump from one floor to the next floor every so often on a regular schedule, and when the cameras weren't on you, you could do anything.

Speaking of doing anything, I dated mares. Before I met the love of my life, I dated four other mares, each one a powerful figure in the Vaults in their own right, a mare any Stallion would be proud to know and prouder to love. But things didn't go anywhere between us. My heart yearned for the emerald perfection of my love.

Speaking of mares, one of the Overmare's ideas on how to reduce unemployment for mid-level and lower-level ponies(And, in her words, take away their excuse for being poor) was to have many, many mid-level ponies get paid to stalk and observe those with jobs to learn how to do them, should any one pony fall ill or get injured. And for the low-level ponies, high-paying jobs were offered in the quarters of Elites as 'Personal Assistants'. If you could follow a pony around all day, carrying his stuff in your saddlebags, or you could stay at home and cook for him, and you were sure you'd never complain about your job or annoy your employer, you could get the job, and the Elites could get their pick of ponies willing to 'Leave their poor lifestyles behind', as many incredibly-punchable Elites put it. There were rules against "Getting Personal" with your Personal Assistant and marrying him or her, but there were no rules against other stuff. Stuff there should really be rules against. Speaking of the 'Shadow Program', as it was called, the program that had unemployed ponies get employed to wait around and eventually perform a job in the place of someone sick or injured… To the program, it didn't matter if you were the second or fourth or seventeenth one on the list of ponies that would replace one particular real worker with a solid job if that worker called in sick. And thanks to one particularly brilliant two-billion IQ piece of legislature, individual ponies were 'Shadowed' instead of large corporations, so an empty role at an office or factory could still go empty if one pony and his 'Shadow' assistants were all sick or injured, even if several other ponies in the room had pages upon pages of names ready and waiting to fill their own gaps. Because you were paid in rations ever so slightly more than jobless ponies were paid for existing if you had your name anywhere on that list, and the 'Elites' at the top thought that was enough to justify all the flaws in the system and turn it into something unfairly good to workers, at the expense of the bean-counters who managed the Stable's food and water supplies.

The five Personal Assistants I got for myself when I was sufficiently high up were Tech-Sec ponies, they were a band of five bright young mares I had working on a secret project of mine, once I was quite certain I could trust them with, hence why they weren't working on new video games I could sell in cassette form or lease to the cabinet-makers, or gimmicky new programs for my Pip-Buck. Perhaps something that automatically forced the nearest robot my Pip-Buck could hack to play one of my songs.

Speaking of my songs, they were great. And they still are. If I have to name one regret, but it can't be anything that would spoil anything that happens later on in this story, it would be that this story does not come with a Songbook, sheet music and all, instructing readers on exactly how they can sing and perform my songs. Still, they'll be sung in assorted scenes, so my story will still have them. And I'll probably arrange performances of these songs, some day.

That music career of mine did wonders for my reputation. Mares wanted me. Local DJs wanted to interview me. I was a busy guy, and 80% of the time, I was having the time of my life. I could have had any mare I wanted. I could have had an unlimited supply of food for myself and my family, if I banged the daughter of the Vault's head chefs or head Quartermaster. I could have had unlimited access to the Vault's gyms and the Vault's best personal trainers, if I banged the daughter of some Hoofball team, Buckball team, Basketball team, or Baseball team coach. I could have had all the guns I ever wanted to play with, and expert instruction on how to use them all, if I banged the local Stable Security interim head's daughter. I say local and interim, because our 'True' head of security was over in Vault 40, and I wasn't interested in doing whatever degeneracy such a position could let me get away with, and force me to do to earn said abusive jerk's trust, giving him blackmail material to use on me in the process. Heck, if I tipped my revolutionary hoof and really pushed for it, I could have probably gotten the Overmare to change her mind regarding the Vault's ban on marriage being anything other than a union between one mare and one stallion willing to promise the vault at least one foal within a year of their marriage on pain of simultaneous execution. There were perks to being wanted, and I made a show of enjoying them for a while in my 'I am a cool dude, but I am also still a star-struck foal on the inside, and I will choose one of the mares who wants him when he is ready' phase. I could get into overbooked rooms, like the upper-level Vault Gyms and upper-level Vault Libraries, which were nicer, and had higher-quality gear and equipment. There was even a state-of-the-art magical hardlight VR Shooting Gallery you could use, but only after the Stable Cleaner Bots had gone in and scrubbed the place clean to cleanse it of the, um... scrubbed the place clean. Yeah.

Why am I doing this? Why am I trying to make a family-friendly version of such an inherently un-family-friendly story?

I have no idea, to be honest.

Why did so many higher-ups have daughters? The same reason so many higher-ups had sons.

But there was one mare I knew I needed if my preferred version of my master plan was going to work, and I had my work cut out for me.

She had no siblings, an oddity for this place. She was quiet. She was repressed, subdued, restrained, and quite shy. She didn't take much initiative, because taking initiative meant taking the risk of being wrong. If she didn't know the answer to something, she wouldn't ask for somepony to tell her about it, because that would mean looking dumb and weak and bad. She was afraid that the ponies in the lower levels hated her, not because the thought of being hated by so many scared her, but because being hated by ponies is a Bad Thing. She wanted her mother to think of her as a Good Daughter, and a good candidate for a future ruler of this Vault.

That's right, she was the Overseer's daughter.

And I had her in my sights.

To bring life and love back to the blasted war-torn hellscape that was once the magical land of Equestria, I was going to seduce the Overseer's daughter.

It wasn't quick, or easy. Heck, at first, she probably only talked to me because she wanted the other mares in the Vault to respect her, and she thought being seen talking to the colt everypony liked would net her some 'cool points' and a higher social standing. Her goal in life was to be an alright Overmare who hopefully wouldn't ever get shot by her underlings in a revolt that hopefully wouldn't ever happen. And after some pushing, she told me that her actual and interesting dream – or as some would call it, her silly foalhood dream – was to write a series of books about a mare who was actually a reincarnated star, sent down from the skies to teach a tiny space station of pony-like kittens how to live in peace and harmony, and it was honestly really crappy. I talked her into making that story better, so I could tell her how proud I was of her revised version, and fill her heart with joy.

Anyway, I wanted her.

And I wanted her to want me.

So, pretty soon, the Overmare's daughter wanted me. Sweet f*cking Celestia, she wanted me. I'd like to say it was my natural charm and charisma that instantly made a mare a year older than me want to marry me as soon as she saw me, but that would be a lie. It wasn't instant, she was a year and a half older than me, and I wasn't exactly born with that charm or charisma. It was through intense training and studying many books, fictional and nonfictional, that I learned how to practice away all of my bad habits and signs of damage, and I also learned how to charm a mare properly. And improperly.

Many books on romance start at 'Express interest in your chosen target and be good to him or her!', and end shortly afterwards. Many books gave instructions on how to behave in a manner the author wished ponies did when one wanted to court another. Many books used a snarky tone and an obnoxiously self-congratulatory number of "This works, it works for me, I'm awesome because I do this, worship me and be like me!" scenes to cover up for a lack of real clinical knowledge on anything beyond squeezing a one-night stand out of some whore who has to already be up for it when you ask her anyway.

I read as many books on the subject as I could, observed relationships in the wild, both healthy ones and unhealthy ones, and I eventually gathered a full working knowledge of how the female equine mind works, how the male equine mind works, and how you REALLY got a mare to want you, and keep wanting you.

I expressed interest in her, I got her attention, and I kept it. I put on an attractive facial expression and said generic witty-person crap only a teenager would be impressed by, I passed the stupid tests you gave somepony when you were getting to know him or her for the first few times, and I got the most adorable reactions out of her, often in front of other mares who wanted me. Sometimes, I got her mad at me, and left her furiously blushing and standing as stiff as an unwanted boner in front of her friends. I made her friends gossip about the mysterious, handsome young bad colt interested in her, and nopony else. I spent just enough time with the high-ranking mares who wanted to steal me out from under her… Wait, no, would 'Above her' be the correct thing to say in that scenario? In any case, I spent just enough time with those mares to make them think they might sway my interest if they tried hard enough and offered me enough perks to make my chosen target want to double their offer. I made her friends jealous that I was talking to her. I made her feel good that I was choosing to talk to her, instead of them. When I talked to her, it was with a purpose, and whether she gave me the responses I wanted or not determined my attitude towards her. Succeeding in something I had asked of her, something small at first, such as reading a book I liked and had recommended, would get her an approving smile and an enjoyable conversation about the topic. When that ended, I'd leave her with another instruction on what to read next before I left. Failing to read the book by the next time I showed up to talk to her would get her a restrained show of disapproval, and some hints that my interest in her might be waning. I wasn't obvious about it, not like some fictional characters were when the writer wanted to make sure that what their seductive character was doing was incredibly obvious and easy for even a novice at the subject to understand.

I didn't abuse her, and I didn't use her. I didn't want her for her body, I wanted her so she could help me achieve my dreams and save millions. And to be honest, she really was pretty cute. And it wasn't as if I was planning on using her up and casting her aside when I was done with her. I had a nice little place in my master plan set out for her, after all.

But there was more to what I did than mere positive and negative reinforcement, which I also used when talking ideology with her, but only when she said something stupidly generic and 'Safe' instead of an actual ideological position. And when she had ideological positions I didn't like, I talked her around to my way of thinking.

Go on. Come on! Stop being old. Break free from your bonds! Break your limits, like I did! Stop being old and boring like your mother. Stop trying to impress me, and impress me! Stop being an out-of-touch, stuck-up little Princess, and be cool. Live a little, and want me, the embodiment of cool! That's what I told her, every time I was with her, through the great dance that was my mixture of body language, unspoken words, and my choice of books we'd romantically read together in her private bedroom when she'd been really good.

'Private Bedroom'… Great. I can't erase that, but there it is. Proof that my Vault wasn't exactly normal after all, because the thought of having a whole bedroom to yourself still feels, to me, like something on the same high-class show-offy rich-pony level as having a whole private swimming pool to yourself, or wrapping yourself in many pounds of gold with thousands of diamonds and other gems studded all over it.

Come to think of it, it probably isn't normal for a teenager to decide to get a slightly-older mare into him in the way that I did. Would it make the subject feel less weird for the reader if I said I was often terrified that one day, the Overmare's Daughter would leave me if I took things too far, or not far enough, or went too fast, or went too slow, or did anything else she didn't like? Or that if any of the born-rich raised-from-birth-to-be-cool ponies with high-ranking positions waiting to be inherited expressed interest in my mare, she'd want them instead? Or that I was terrified that if she ever saw the real me, she would leave me or even order me killed out of sheer disgust?

Anyway, once I'd gotten her to want me and seriously consider a life spent with me, we formed a proper relationship with love, mutual trust, and a lot of care for each other. I talked her around to my point of view on every ideological issue that mattered to me, our society, and the planet, and only when I knew I had her did I tell her about my dreams.

An edited, redacted version of my dreams, of course. It felt strangely lonely, to hide different parts of who you were around different ponies. It was as if there was a wall between you and each pony, and that wall was attached to the different masks you knew you had to wear if you wanted to keep these ponies around. But that was just one of many hard things in my life I had to bear. One mildly-generic and somewhat-safe speech that gradually accelerated into dangerous territory later(Thank Celestia our Vault had an Overseer, not an Overhearer!) and she was finally fantasizing about a happy life where we ruled the Vault as joint Overseer, a married couple taking the roles of Overmare and Overstallion, and we made the world a better place and reformed the Expansion Program to make it safer while pouring ALL of the Vault's Research And Development budget into finding reliable and safe ways to open two-way portals from here to different worlds and alternate universes, and we all struck metaphorical gold and real gold and we found a wonderful world without war and we went there and all lived happily ever after with infinite resources and infinite space and infinite happiness and blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, it's nice to talk about a best-case scenario, but I wish I didn't have to take so long slowly acclimatizing her to the idea of helping me take over the Vault and lending my army a degree of perceived legitimacy in the eyes of the broken Vault Ponies in love with the system and authority after my coup. I remember, for the longest time, wishing she was an exciting, cool, spirited, badass mare with brilliant ideas and a fiery temper she'd unleash at anypony who displeased her, except for me, because she loved me with all of her lively, pounding, hot-blooded heart. I remember weighing my options and reminding myself that she's not really bad, per se, just not interesting like the cool fictional mares I read about and fantasized about dominating and taming and f*cking like a horny rabbit. And then, as we grew closer and she started to trust me more, she started to show more of her true personality and… Well, my desire for a forceful and spirited mare must have been a result of my subconscious mind trying to tell me something. Or something Destiny had chosen to bless me with, in preparation for her, for beneath the layers of shyness and safeness and rules of proper decorum that had been drilled into her from the moment she had first opened her eyes, she had that spark, she had that forcefulness, and she had one heck of an inventive mind. At night, when she wasn't building robots, she went to the shooting galleries, and got pretty good scores. I'd like to say she also donned a black suit of armour with a helmet that concealed her identity every few nights, and in this disguise, she was known through the entire Vault as the Mysterious Stranger, the ultimate fighter nopony could beat at any range, one feared and respected by all. She was not that, and her mother would not have allowed it if she tried. But hey, she was still pretty cool. And she still had her own Mysterious Stranger outfit, which she used when she visited the Tech-Sec and took her robots with her for some field testing. She couldn't rebel openly under the hoof of her mother, and her father had killed himself in her mother's bedroom at her request when she was seven, so his opinion wasn't a factor. And she wasn't bad in a fight, even without that impressively powerful spell she had, the one that allowed her to turn her whole body into a shifting and fluid living diamond-like substance harder than diamond. Or the spell that allowed her to conjure simple shapes, such as rectangles and spheres, and simple weapons, such as broadswords and tower shields, out of the same material.

Turns out all that "I want to make a nice, sweet, safe story about kitties!" garbage was just a cover story. Her true goal was to be seen writing that, while writing other, better stories in secret. Exciting, dangerous stories of heartbreak, betrayal, war, and fighting for what you believed in. Her plan was to admit that she wrote the books she would pen under the fake name of Big Green on her deathbed. After all, she said to me one otherwise-routine day, nopony would expect a mare to name themselves Big Green.

Did I mention she had a genius-level IQ, like myself?

Her real goal, as it turns out, was to become the Overmare, and merely feign incompetence. She would feign incompetence, impotence, and a wishy-washy wait-and-see play-it-safe nature. "I'll do my best, for everypony!" She would cheerfully state in the stupid little speeches she often rehearsed with a sufficiently hopeful, pure-hearted, and ever so slightly dopey tone. She would be a reliably unreliable idiot anypony in power could bend to their whims. For every one backstabber who wished he or she was the Overseer, there would be five more who would greatly benefit from having her in power, willing to hold that backstabber back and even violently deal with him or her in some cameraless corner if things came to blows.

She would seem to be an idiot, while she carried out her reforms. And whenever she did something one Elite didn't like, he or she would simply assume that some other Elite swayed and manipulated her harder. 'Accidents' would start to happen to the worst, the vilest, the most abusive and corrupt dogs in positions of authority, making room for ponies she trusted and would appoint, if appointing the agenda-pushing offspring of an 'Elite' soon to die anyway wouldn't end up turning out the same way anyway. Her Stable Security would seem to go to pieces in the gradually-worsening chaos as evil 'Elites' died coated in evidence that other 'Elites' did it, and corrupt grunts and bosses obtained sealed instructions to kill even more corrupt grunts and bosses. And through it all, she would pretend to be an idiot playing right into the hooves of some evil rich asshole convinced that her machinations were his own, and that his own machinations had lied undetected for years. Or even decades! And other elites would be led to believe that she was getting fully taken under the wing and hoof of that evil rich 'Elite', forcing them to play their cards to get rid of that one and each other. Only once she had purged all of the corruption from the top dogs, right under their very noses, would she start to properly and openly push through reforms that would benefit all of the Vault's ponies and ensure its long-term survival.

So she certainly wasn't opposed to having to integrate her plan to save the Vault into mine.

I still think mine is better, because it would help the Vault faster, and it wouldn't rely on unpredictable variables like whether the different cabals of rich aristocratic cutthroats would spend their time cutting each other's throats instead of hers or not, and whether the Aristocrats would stay fractured and opposed to one another or whether they would unite to form a cabal in the guise of a parliament or council that would take power from her and seek to 'Restore Order', and replace it with an order that puts them and their offspring permanently at the top while the Vault rots beneath them.

But I have to admit, her plan was brilliant. And it didn't require her to openly risk her life or spend years laying the groundwork for a revolution.

Also, she was a fundamentally good person. Probably should have said that earlier on, but yeah, she's a good person.

She was my Precious Gem, and I loved her.

…Dang it, I forgot to mention the actual name of the Overmare's Daughter. I swear, I do love her. Even now, after all this time.

Her name is Radiant Emerald.

It might seem odd to a pony from my Vault, since many Expansion Program ponies name their foals after gemstones, rocks, mountains, canaries, and other things associated with mining(Even though they are diggers, not miners), but I suppose her mother thought there wasn't much else a gold and silver-maned emerald-green Unicorn could be named. Gold on the right and silver on the left, her mane's twin colours extend straightly from her head to fall down and frame either side of her face beautifully, with the excess hair on the back of her hair and neck tossed on the right side, her hair's golden side naturally resting atop her silver side. Her tail is a naturally-twisting spiral of both colours; ending in a diamond-studded emerald-green bow she re-ties herself whenever it comes undone. Her mismatched silver and gold eyes copy the colour scheme of her mane in reverse. Her Cutie Mark is of a f*cking big emerald. We're not sure what it means, since emeralds have meant pretty much everything out there in the nonsense field of pseudomagical spirituality – Books claim they can heal the heart, calm and restore the soul, and symbolize and ensure or at least aid in growth, eternity and long life, healing, one's ability to care for nature, reflection, fertility, peace and balance. Books claim emeralds can also aid the ability to breathe steadily while meditating and represent the innocence of inexperienced greenhorns, the hardness of the gemstones themselves, and so much more - but considering how surprisingly tough the mare is, we're pretty sure her Cutie Mark means she's tough. After all, gems are tough. Emeralds might not be the absolute toughest stones out there, but they also look nice. They're certainly more interesting than boring, generic, stupid diamonds. Sure, they might supposedly be the hardest gemstones out there, outside of the fancy magically-made junk, but in their perfection, they are boring. They lack colour. They're only good for storing enchantments, really.

She's my wife. Sort of. We haven't had an official ceremony in front of the whole Vault, a colossal ode to excess and our eternal love, narration of the ceremony broadcast live on official Vault Radio, like the one we've dreamed up and fantasized over together just yet. Especially since part of our dream wedding includes it happening outside of our Vault, in a massive city called New Canterlot within a beautiful and fully-healed Equestria, thousands of ponies watching in awe as we say our vows and kiss, and then I f*ck her on the wedding podium before everypony's shocked stares. Or I carry her off to a private bedroom where we f*ck, either works and we haven't been able to agree on that last part yet.

In any case, we've already had a small, cheap, private ceremony for myself and a few of our closest friends and most trusted allies to make our wedding pseudo-official. Well, my closest friends and most trusted allies made up my side of the audience, and backstabbing political conspirers currently allied to her made up her own. Everypony in the Vault knows it: I'm hers, and she's mine.

Anyway, now that I've told you about myself, my Vault and its history, the political situation that made the Vaults necessary, and the first mare I ever f*cked, I can get to what some may consider the most important part of this entirely-necessary pre-story infodump.

Let me tell you a little bit about Pip-Bucks, and show you mine.

You remember that mine is the Pip-Buck 7000, with a Radio receiver, a Rad counter that'll tell you how much radiation-like necromantic 'Taint' is in the area, along with nonmagical nuclear radiation(We decided to add the feature after early Maginuclear Reactors made ponies pointlessly panicky about potential leaks), and the ability to turn the user invisible for up to five minutes per day every 24 hours, right? Well, that's not all it can do.

First of all, Eyes-Forward Sparkle. A neat little feature that had been upgraded so often, I found it hard to believe that at one point, it merely placed a tiny little bar in the bottom-right corner of your vision beneath your health meter, with thick lines displaying not where your friends and foes were and how far away they were, but merely what direction they could be found in. I also hear that these little 'Compasses' could only display targets in front of you and beside you, with targets behind you appearing as if they were beside you. Sure, THAT would never confuse somepony at a vital and potentially-fatal moment. I hear some models even had built-in limits that prevented the Compass systems from displaying more than twenty – or was it fifty? – foes at any given time, after some pre-war test had found that the system started to lag when it tried to track the hundreds of foes you might find on a battlefield.

Mine was better. The Pip-Buck 7000 model was just objectively better For one thing, the two functions of my 'Compass' had been divided into two separate displays. The one in the bottom-left corner was something small to remind you if you were heading North, East, South, West, Northeast, South-By-Southwest, or any other of the 32 horizontal directions that mattered. My 'Enemy Compass' was wider and thinner, and translucent. A long and thin horizontal line, notched, with 5 numbers beneath the notches to needlessly remind you how directions worked with this thing. 360, 270, 0, 90, and 360 were the numbers that marked and oriented my compass. The notches ticked upwards with slight spiking points, and the numbers were beneath it. And unlike the eight 'NESW' letters of my directional compass, they didn't move about. You could see through the whole thing, numbers and all, if you wanted to, but you could still see it clearly enough for you to use it at the same time. Quite handy, really, and it's hard to describe to a pony who'd never used one of these to describe how your mind adapted and grew around this feature when you'd had it since you could walk. Your other senses didn't dull or anything, you'd still notice somepony sneaking up behind you if your Pip-Buck didn't tell you about it, for the same reason you'd notice a black-clad but utterly-silent pony sneaking up in front of you in a purely-white room. Using it felt natural to you, like using a sixth sense. Or a seventh sense, in the case of Unicorns, who already had a sixth sense for sensing magic use, and Pegasi, who had a sixth sense for sensing wind currents and things moving towards you. I once read that a Pegasus's wings were a bit like a cat's whiskers: Both could serve as an early-warning system for the lucky guy or gal with those things. Do Earth Ponies have an official and scientifically-recognized sixth sense, again? I'm not sure. Anyway, back to cool tech shit: This 'Life Compass' of mine, as it was officially called in the official .PDF Instruction Manual, displayed friends and foes all around me in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree radius, and instead of marking their locations with stupid and useless bulky lines, it did something smarter.

It used triangles. Small, downwards-pointing triangles, with the size of the triangles telling me how close or far away the detected life forms were. The triangles of foes over two hundred meters away didn't shrink any more and the triangles of foes within ten meters of you or less didn't grow any more, but apart from that, the system was pretty great. The feature's radius was around two thousand meters, and after enough time spent using it, you'd eventually develop an almost instinctive sense for how to use it without even thinking about it.

The numbers helped. So did the other triangles. To put it another way, whenever I looked at a life form, my Pip-Buck 'Marked' that life form automatically. Which meant a small and illusionary triangle would hover over the head of that 'Marked' being, be it a friend, a foe, or a neutral party. Above those triangles only the Pip-Buck's wearer could see, triangles that existed to keep track of what direction your Marked pony was in, numbers and the lowercase letter 'm' hovered and updated themselves in real-time. If I saw you, a triangle would appear above your head in my vision, with some numbers above it to tell you how many meters away from me you were. If you walked behind a wall, that triangle would remain, and a pulsing white… You know how echoes are typically visually rendered? Imagine that constantly running along your body, along with a white outline constantly around you to outline you and tell me where you are. I would be able to see you through walls, through smoke, even through several feet of solid steel. Sure, your life signature would eventually find itself cleared from my device's logs after an hour had passed since the last moment I saw you, but until then, I would always know what direction I could find you in and how far away you were from me. Oh, and I could always bring up my Pip-Buck to mark your signature as a 'Favourite', to permanently store you in one of ten spaces my device has ready for this feature. This would allow my device to permanently remember your signature and display it constantly in my vision until the day you die. Or the day my Pip-Buck is destroyed. Or the day something wipes out all of my Pip-Buck's data. I would also be able to 'Toggle' my device's display of your remembered signature on and off, so if I wanted to go a few days without seeing a white rendering of you through walls, before going back to always knowing exactly where you were, I could.

Anyway, once I Marked you on my Life Compass with this, I would also be able to see how many meters away from me you were, rendered as numbers my Life Compass. So, to recap: If I saw you, I'd know where you were for the next hour at the very least, and I'd have two triangles that told me where you were. One triangle on my Life Compass, and one triangle that always floated above your head, no matter where it was.

Those little triangular marks on my Life Compass that showed the location of enemies would get more translucent the further-away a target was, though a small and thin arrow-bottomed vertical line near the base of the marks would always remain solid to aid in the visibility of said marks.

Finally, I could toggle my Life Compass and everything about it on and off. Or I could just toggle the Marked Pony system on and off, while keeping the usual triangular numberless compass marks. I could also toggle one option in the Settings menu to ensure that only Foes and Neutral Parties would be tagged by this system. Yes, the Life Compass and regular Compass made fine additions to my EFS Display, which told me my current Health, Magic, and Action Point levels, my radiation level, my currently-equipped weapon and how much ammo I had left for it, whether my weapon had an attached subweapon or not, and how much ammo it had, my currently-equipped grenade of choice, whether I was currently hidden or detected, whether enemies were currently looking for me or not, what percentage of 'Concealment' I was currently at(The better you blended in with your surroundings, the darker it was, and the slower you were crouching while sneaking, the harder you were to spot, which increased that number), and there was even a small and square grey translucent Minimap in the bottom-right corner of my vision, which used radar to scan and display the area around me from a bird's-eye view, with myself as a pointed purple isosceles triangle in the center, and Waypoint Markers and Quest Objectives made by my Pip-Buck's Quest Tracker as five-pointed blue stars that flashed white for a fifth of a second every four fifths of a second. Hostiles would be displayed as red dots, just as friendlies would be displayed as green dots, and neutral parties would be displayed as pure-white dots. If I had friends at my side in that moment, small and cartoonish 'Vault Pony' icons would be generated to display their faces, and I would be able to see their health, magic, and Action Point bars next to their face icons.

Did I say just say 'Finally'? I meant finally as in 'Finally, I can move on to the next feature', not 'Finally, I can get on with the story'. Trust me, I'd love to skip all of this as well, but you'll need to know this stuff later on, so you can appreciate it more when you learn it organically through reading my story.

I've told you about the EFS, the Eyes-Forward Sparkle. But have I told you about the device's ability to store weapons and armour, AND scan them for damage? When you had your Pip-Buck's 'Weapons' or 'Armour' tabs open, you could see a tiny Video Game-style health bar for each item, visually displaying the arbitrary number it deemed the item's 'Condition' to be. According to the instruction manuals, all items had a 'Maximum Condition' and a regular 'Condition', which should have been called something like 'Current Condition', in my opinion. An item's 'Maximum Condition' was the arbitrary number your Pip-Buck assigned to how tough your item is, and how much wear and tear it can withstand. An item's current 'Condition' was the arbitrary number it assigned the state your chosen item was currently in. So a recently-washed shirt would have, for example, 1000/1000 Condition, while a torn-up shirt full of bullet holes would have 40/100 Condition. It's not a metric I particularly saw the point in, which is why I'm glad the Condition System keeps it simple by just giving you an easy-to-read health bar. Speaking of item deterioration, the Pip-Buck 7000 model was immune to that, thanks to a sophisticated on-board auto-repair system. Magic, you gotta love it.

Speaking of Video Games, while this Pip-Buck had the usual cassette player, which meant it could play all the latest physically-released games, it could also wirelessly connect to any Terminal. And if that Terminal had any Cassettes inside it, I could force that computer to play that game, while my Pip-Buck screen used magic to perfectly copy what was on its bigger screen.

Speaking of screens, my device's thick glass screen was more of a decoration than anything. While it still functioned properly, I preferred to use the bigger illusionary screen that could be toggled on and off at will. The illusionary screen hovered a few inches above the physical screen, which went dead, becoming fully black while its display was magically raised outside of its usual physical constraints. The device also has a magical touch screen, one magically enchanted to only work based on Intent. If I wanted to touch my screen to change my currently-selected menu or something, and I did so, it would register. If I wanted to select one thing and I tapped the wrong thing, the right thing would be selected. If I wanted my screen's currently-displayed menu to change and I didn't want to tap the screen, it would change for me anyway. If somepony tapped my screen to mess with my menus and I didn't approve of this, none of his taps would register. And as a bonus, with this gimmick and the aforementioned unrestrained-screen thing, I could also view and interact with all of my menus at once.

I've just realized that I glossed over my Pip-Buck's ability to store items. Well… Think of it like having a magical suitcase. A magical suitcase that follows you around, floating and intangible, something you can only interact with using your Pip-Buck. A magical suitcase that'll weigh nothing at all, no matter what goes inside it… Until you put so much inside it that you go beyond its current weight limit. At that point, a lot of weight starts to press down on you. Not enough to kill you, but enough to make you struggle to stand and walk. Galloping in that state is certainly out of the question. The weight that presses down on you isn't equivalent to what you have stored in that 'Magical Suitcase', either. You could teleport stuff near you into that 'Suitcase' until you had twenty thousand pounds of weight in there, and you'd still feel the same incredible weight crushing you that you'd feel if you'd only gone over your weight limit by a single pound. Your weight limit starts at two hundred and fifty pounds for a Unicorn or Pegasus (Three hundred pounds for an Earth Pony, no idea what it is for a Zebra, Donkey, Griffon, or anything else. It's probably three hundred for Zebras, they're basically Earth Ponies without any redeeming qualities), and that weight limit is increased by the end result of ten multiplied by the arbitrary number the average Vit-O-Matic Vigor Tester machine will give you on standard settings for your Strength stat.

There's one more thing my Pip-Buck's EFS can do, and it does something ponies everywhere had always secretly wanted their Pip-Bucks to do, whether they knew it or not: When changing the colour of text, S.A.T.S. and E.F.S. displays, and so on, you could designate more than one colour to be used. If you wanted the names of your items to be a bright yellow, you wanted the little box designating which items were equipped to be a bright pale blue, you wanted the rectangular highlight that told you what you were currently selecting to be pink, and you wanted all of your enemies to appear the your octagonal mini-map in the bottom-right corner of your EFS as pale light-blue letter Ds while making the triangle that represented you look like a penis, you could.

Speaking of the minimap, it tracks the location of nearby hostiles and can be maximized to fill your whole field of vision as a translucent illusionary layer, and minimized back to its original size at will. And speaking of the word translucent, if you ever want to look through any EFS element and see what it's slightly obscuring, it'll fade out even more than usual for you. That's a neat little feature.

Let's see, what else is there to talk about…

Audio can be recorded, using the Pip-Buck. Radio broadcasts and songs can be copied and replayed at will, and burned onto new Cassette tapes. Audio can be cut up, copied and pasted, amplified, reversed, automatically 'Tuned' to any key or notes of your choice, sped up or slowed down in a manner that also raised or lowered the pitch of the audio, sped up or slowed down with a technique that did not alter the pitch of the audio, and deleted on the fly, though it'll take about a minute for your finished audio file to be saved and compiled into a small, easily-shared audio file.

Oh, and it also boasted advanced Pip-Buck tracking technologies, enhanced hacking capability, a DETAILED PRE-WAR MAP of Equestria in FULL EYE-POPPING 16-BIT COLOUR and an alright 2d display that could pan around and rotate slightly to turn into AN INCREDIBLE ISOMETRIC 2.5D DISPLAY that allowed the user to rotate the map and see 2d icons rotate to face the camera, it even had the ability to automatically assign tags to saved locations and temporarily stop displaying locations with those tags, or focus only on those tags! You could even assign tags to your friends, and filter out certain tags to stop them from appearing on your map! It also boasted a motion sensor, and its map updated itself in real-time, so if you were heading for a monument or some other landmark and it just didn't exist any more, the map would update itself for you.

And the Pip-Buck could be made to glow like a flashlight. A really bright flashlight that shat all over the mediocre flashlights lesser Pip-Bucks could double as in a pinch.

And now, to tell you about the big guns. The best guns. The coolest, best, and most important feature of this Pip-Buck model, when it comes to combat.

There was a time when these Pip-Bucks came with a feature called "S.A.T.S.", something called a Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. Somewhere down the line of time, somepony must have realized how stupid it is to name something used for shooting and killing/'Home Defence' after a meaningless brand name that used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test. Seriously, who came up with EITHER of these names? Pre-War Scholars went to Schools and Colleges so they could learn more stuff, and the names of the tests they performed on their students shouldn't've sounded like they specifically only tested whether their students had the 'Aptitude' for what they were being taught or not. As for S.A.T.S., calling it a 'Targeting Spell' implies that there's a real, tangible spell a sufficiently skilled Unicorn could cast without the set-in-steel technological efficiency of an Arcane Science device helping them out. This new, upgraded feature with new and improved bonus features was known as O.A.T.S.

OATS, the Optical Adaptable Targeting System.

If you're familiar with standard Pip-Bucks, you know about the standard S.A.T.S. ability these things have, to slow down and almost completely freeze your perception of time while you queue up a sequence of all the attacks you can make on whichever body part of whichever foe in range you want hurt. It's as if time has stopped completely. Fire your gun, swing your sword, cast your spell, and shake a stick at a God. If it's an offensive action, you can Queue it up. No, rude gestures and dance moves don't count, for some reason. When you're ready to initiate the fun part of S.A.T.S., time resumes flowing and the spell takes over you, forcing you to perform that sequence of actions in what seems to be slow motion with unnaturally-perfect pre-programmed magic-assisted movements. It's a weird sensation, but the Pip-Buck doesn't instantly make you the God of melee, spellcasting, or shooting. It uses your own skills in these fields, but at their peak. The peak of your current skill level, that is, not your body's theoretical peak. So, if you're garbage at shooting and you're using S.A.T.S. to try and hit an enemy, you're going to be at your personal best, not at ponykind's best. Get better at shooting, and you'll be more likely to hit foes in S.A.T.S..

O.A.T.S. is basically exactly that, but with a better name. And the ability to calculate the firing lines of guns, the arcs of grenades, and the countdowns of those grenades. And instead of the traditional cap of 95%, your accuracy in O.A.T.S.'s Auto-Aim system is capped at 99%. Finally, you can open up a menu list containing categories that contain all the spells you know while time is 'Paused', and the top category is a 'Most recently used spells' list instead of an actual category like 'Fire' or 'Restoration', which every other category on your list is.

Oh, and you can use O.A.T.S. to slow time down. You retain your usual control over yourself, only slowed down like everything else. If you want to burn through your supply of Action Points faster, you can increase the 'Multiplier' that slows time down, and if you honestly hate having Action Points, you can decrease that time 'Multiplier' for yourself. Unfortunately, that part can't even be activated unless you have enough Action Points to spend more than a second under its effects, and most ponies don't. I didn't, at the start of this story. Still, it's hard to believe the programming for this was inspired by an old and jailbroken copy of S.A.T.S..

O.A.T.S. also boasted a maximum effective range so much larger than its stupidly-named predecessors, it could detect and assist in aiming at targets LONG before you got into the range where you or anypony else with a Pip-Buck had any hope in heck of actually hitting any targets outside of the traditional operating system's limits, even though that was really a somewhat useless feature when you thought about it. And in a real feat of Pony ingenuity, when its upgraded O.A.T.S. system successfully aided its user in hitting a target, luck energy generated by the pony that would normally flow back into the universe and fade away, diluting itself out into nothingness like urine in the ocean, would instead find itself absorbed back into the Pip-Buck and stored. This allowed ponies to save up or "Bank" their luck for things they really needed it for, like taking an O.A.T.S-assisted shot they needed to turn out juuuust right, the wind and recoil and air resistance and all sorts of other things luckily just happening to turn out juuuust right, while any of your own natural errors O.A.T.S couldn't smooth out just fortunately happened to make your shot as perfect as possible, luckily ensuring that the bullet would not just hit its mark, but hit its mark in the most fortunate place possible. 'Banking a Critical' was what the Instruction Manual called this feature, and it said a pony's natural luckiness was what determined how quickly your Critical bar fills with each shot.

Finally, the O.A.T.S. system came with something confusingly called an 'Aimbot', even though 'Firebot' or 'Shootbot' would be a more appropriate name. If you toggled it on, any weapon you had equipped would automatically fire as soon as your EFS's crosshairs detected that you were pointing your weapon at a hostile target, and it would automatically stop firing as soon as the target was dead. Every shot fired in this manner would cost you some Action Points at a prohibitively-expensive rate, but if you don't like killing enemies in slow motion, it's a neat trick. Reloads costed extra Action Points while this was on.

I'd like to say the O.A.T.S. system used Action Points more efficiently, or could regenerate them faster, or could make all of your shots more likely to hit their mark, or could allow you to move around in stopped time for as long as you wanted, but all of these statements would be a lie. Still, the ability to pause time for everyone, including yourself, and the ability to slow time for everypony, including yourself, these are useful tricks to keep in your back pocket. There are times when, in the heat of battle, you need to pause time and strategize, take stock of your surroundings, formulate a new plan, or even give yourself a pep-talk. O.A.T.S. can let you do that at will without making you a target or a detriment to your team.

Finally, the O.A.T.S. system allowed you to link your Pip-Buck up with the Pip-Bucks of your friends and followers during combat, allowing you to use H.A.R.M.O.N.I.Z.E., The Helpful Armament Reorganization Matrix Of Networked Zeal Executable. Think of it like an activation of O.A.T.S.'s time-stopping limb-targeting ability, except you're queuing up actions for yourself and your friends in a row. When you're ready, you Execute the list of commands and queued actions, and each pony performs their designated actions in slowed time. You can make yourself and your friends take their actions in turns, or you can make yourself and your friends begin following each pony's respective queues at once. Oh, and you can set your Pip-Buck to automatically set the same command simultaneously for every linked Pip-Buck's O.A.T.S. action queue, if you want. Then you can rearrange, delete, or alter the action queues of specific ponies. While queuing actions, you can switch between viewing yourself and your teammates from a third-person perspective and viewing the general area from an isometric perspective. A grid of hexagons will also appear on the ground while you're doing this, mapping out the terrain's floor and helping you keep yourself oriented. You can also force the friends you're commanding to move from one of those hexagons to another one, expending Action Points in the process. It can only be activated by whoever the group has designated as the Group Leader, and while he or she can queue up any of the standard combat actions for any targets and against any target, each commanded unit gets the chance to agree with, or reject, the commands given before the 'Fun Part' of O.A.T.S. can begin. If one unit rejects their H.A.R.M.O.N.I.Z.E. commands, the Group Leader will see a little square in his EFS display with text on it, warning him about how many targets rejected their commands and who they were. The Group Leader then gets three options: He can either Clear their current queue of commands for all units and make a new one for each one, Clear the queue of commands for those who rejected their queues and try again, or to command the ponies that accepted their commands to go obey their orders and start shooting while those who rejected their commands do their own thing.

Pretty cool, eh? Well, it's about to get even cooler. You probably know what a Radio is, and you probably know about radio broadcast towers and even two-way radios, with speakers and microphones hooked up to them. Well, my Pip-Buck contains the technology of something even more advanced than that. This tech might seem a little 'Out there', but I'm going to have to ask you to suspend your disbelief for a moment.

It's called a Pip-Phone, named after Phonetic Communication (The supposedly-enlightened pseudointellectual's needlessly ostentatious word for 'Talking') and as cool as it might sound, trust me, it's even more useful than you'd think! It uses the device's on-board microphone and speakers, along with the microphone and speakers of whichever Pip-Buck you've wirelessly connected to your device using this feature, to create a two-way communication network. It's hard to describe this technology with words, especially since it was so new when it first came out, but… think of it like forming a portal in space, with you at one end and your friend at the other. You can now speak to that friend through that portal, even if he's far away. Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. It can connect to two-way radio systems, too. And if you're connecting to something older with this feature, like a radio station or even a one-way radio receiver, or even a robot, you can hijack its speakers and speak through it, even if it doesn't have a microphone. You can also transmit any data you want while the two-way magical link is active, such as stored notes. How can a Pip-Phone connect to one particular radio set, or one particular Pip-Boy, no matter where it is or how factory-standard it might be? Magic. If you know who you want to call, you can call him or her quite easily, as long as that pony's willing to pick up whatever it is that starts ringing. It also has a Private Call mode that, when toggled on, ensures that only the pony you want to call can hear the 'Ringing' noise of a radio/Pip-Buck getting called by the Pip-Phone, and only the pony you want to call can hear your voice when the call is 'Picked up' and accepted.

The only real 'Downside' to the Pip-Phone is that instead of having its own tab somewhere, the function to open the Pip-Phone menu is programmed to be recognized by the standard OS as an item in your inventory with scripts attached to trigger when equipped, stuck at the top of your Armour tab, just above your Item Reorganizer button, which was forced to share the same unusual space. Luckily, the scripts programmed into the 'Item' recognize 'Run script when Equipped' and 'When equipped, unequip' as functions to automatically perform. Thanks to the 'jailbreaking' (Code-cracking, followed by insertion of additional code to add a script-extender) of the Pip-Buck systems, which happened many revisions ago, Pip-Bucks can be made to equip and unequip non-existent items without causing the whole system to crash.

Speaking of the Item Reorganizer, it'll open up a small menu with three options when you select it: Organize, Settings, and Close. Choose Organize, and it'll apply one of [These] tags to every item in your inventory whenever it's selected. Stimpaks and Healing Powder will find themselves renamed to '[Aid] Stimpak]' and '[Aid]Healing Powder', while food items like Fresh Tomatoes and Grapes will find themselves renamed to '[Food]Fresh Tomatoes' and '[Food]Grapes'. As for weapons and armour, they get multiple tags. A '10mm Pistol' would find itself renamed to '[Small Guns][Pistol][10mm]10mm Pistol', while a sledgehammer would find itself renamed to '[Melee Weapons][Heavy][Blunt]'. There would also be a star there, on the right end of its name, if it had been modified in any way. The same applies to pieces of armour. For example, a Technician or Repair Pony's Utility Barding that, according to the Pip-Buck, increased the arbitrary number assigned to how good you are at repairing things, would be renamed to '[Light][Skill]Utility Barding'. If you selected Close, the Item Reorganizer's menu will close, and if you selected Options, you get to mess around with the order in which tags appear, whether certain items or types of items will be ignored by the tagging system or not, if there are any additional category tags you want to add to items, and so on. It's so useful, I'm surprised the original inventor of Pip-Bucks didn't include this function as standard.

Finally, it boasted an in-built music player, The X-Cell System, a sickeningly excessive and officially decadent-as-f*ck isixty four gigabytes/i of storage space, which is great for storing over a thousand hours of these things called 'Listeners', audio recordings of ponies reading books to you. The X-Cell system was a little something installed in all modern Pip-Bucks, something that the 'Most Elite of the Elites', a group known as the Creme De La Crème or 'The Crèmes', had assisted in creating.

…Well, they supplied the idea, and that was as much as anypony with sense could expect from those egotistical rich idiots. They said they wanted something, they set a deadline and expected it done, and it was up to the technological sector to provide it for them or face their wrath.

The X-Cell System kept tabs on its wearer's actions. It did not report them to anyone, or pass judgement on them. It simply counted how many times something was done, like how many books you'd read in your life, or how many pieces of bread you'd eaten in your life. Once you'd done a certain task a certain number of times, or carried out some specified difficult task once, a tiny amount of magic would be taken from the Pip-Buck's battery and inserted into your body, enhancing your ability to do that thing, or something relevant to it. What that necessary number of times would be depended on the task in question and what kind of boost the system was offering: Some challenges wanted you to do something five times, some challenges wanted you to do something ten times, some wanted you to do something fifteen or thirty times, some wanted you to do something fifty times, and some wanted you to do something one or two or five hundred times. Harder challenges like "Get a perfect score at the firing range" or "Cast a Level Six Fire Spell" usually gave you a boost after five or ten successful attempts, while easier ones like "Go to sleep on time and wake up on time" or "Go a day without breaking any laws" required a good few hundred successes. Challenges could be submitted by the people, and while the Head Pip-Buck Technician supposedly had the final say about what challenges did and did not get into the game, that Creme usually delegated this task to his many underlings, letting the ponies of wildly-varying ages choose which challenges did and did not make it into the next weekly update for all Pip-buck systems.

It was easy enough to see why the thing was wanted, and why the technological sector all the time and resources that had to be spent making perfecting it, while jobless ponies were allowed to be temporarily drafted as maids and grunt workers to be ordered around. On the surface level, it encouraged living life to its fullest, it encouraged excellence, it was the final piece of the puzzle for a device designed to aid and assist ponies in becoming greater. Beneath that surface level, it was a good way of bringing the Elite's way of thinking into reality, while making that way of thinking seem kind, benevolent, even generous. Even though the Elite's way of viewing the world was: If it could accomplish something, it was worth teaching and training and improving, and if it wasn't, it was garbage. It didn't deserve help, it deserved to be thrown away. It was a dead end, best not to be checked out or even looked at. If it was good, it would be one of us, and if it isn't one of us, it can't be good.

This ideology might seem attractive on paper, to some. But what would have happened if the ponies destined to make great discoveries were culled before their time? Wealth isn't some arbitrary concept that exists on the planet, manifested in its pre-existing limited resources, to be hoarded by the worthy and taken away from the unworthy so it cannot be misused. Wealth is created whenever somepony somewhere finds a use for something that was once thought useless. Diamonds were considered useless until somepony realized how hard they were. And they were considered stupid, gimmicky things exclusively for high-end power tools and the jewellery of mares and stallions everywhere, until the day ponies invented the art of infusing spells into gems and enchanting items. Even worthless things like snake oil and dog crap could be converted into poisons by Zebras, so even they were able to create wealth. Of course, Zebras didn't contribute anywhere near enough to the world to make up for what they took from it, and Earth Pony chemists quickly discovered some interesting Potion-related secrets through experimentation. I'll leave them for later, to hype up somepony who saved my life more than a few times.

In addition to the previously-stated benefits of the X-Cell system, there was one more side benefit, something those in Vault Security loved quite a bit: By counting everything that you ever did, the system also counted your misdeeds. Should a Crème, Elite, or Vault Security pony ever check the Pipbuck of a hard-working Worker, a Tech-Sec scientist, or a jobless Deadender, a pampered Elite, or even an extra-pampered fellow Crème, that pony's achievements and crimes - curfew violations, pickpockets, thefts, assaults - would be tallied up for all to see... provided that the pony getting the Pip-Buck Examination didn't have Sunrise's custom-made mod installed for those numbers. He couldn't make the system think he'd achieved more than he had and give him all the bonuses and magical enhancements he wanted overnight, because he had no idea how to hack the program himself... and if he did, he would give himself all the achievement bonuses in an instant and reap the massive unearned rewards. Still, he could quite easily use the beginner-level programming knowledge he held to rig a program up, and have it define some variables as zero or some other low number chosen by the user and then force the Pipbuck's screen to display those designated variables in place of the actual stored numbers of minor and major crimes stored in its memory banks. It certainly earned him favour with the less rule-abiding citizens of the vault, especially those who thought he had forever abandoned them and the Dark Stars way, and assisted considerably in his epic quest to create a gang large enough to get him out of here, so he could finally pull off some REAL achievements for the world. Yes, I had a sizeable faction of followers that thought the same as me, or wanted the same as me, or had been swayed by my charisma and promises of a brighter world for all, free of culls to satisfy the appetites of the parasites that ruled us, but I held no illusions regarding the moral character of my rulers. I was privately hoping for peace, but planning for all-out war in the event that my plans for an attempt at a swift and decisive coup would fail.

Well, that was it for the Pip-Bucks. Oh, wait. Finally, the Pip-Buck 7000 was considerably tougher than older Pip-Buck Models and seven whole grams lighter than the Pip-Buck 3000, and its screen lacked the usual screen-flickering visual effects and 'Scan Lines', because when you wanted to call something an improvement over something else, it has to be better in every way that could possibly matter to anypony willing to test everything about the new model.

Aaand now that's everything.

I'd like to say the one I wore had some custom modifications that made it even better than every other Pip-Buck 7000 in the world. I'd like to say its inner circuitry had been modified, allowing it to draw mainly from its own multi-century magical power supply, rather than the energy of my own body, when it activated O.A.T.S. or tried to slow down time. I'd like to say this allowed it to stop time indefinitely, while allowing me to walk around as if time was flowing normally, the exponentially-worsening drain on the device's magic not bothering it in the slightest. I'd like to say it could passively absorb the motion of air moving around it as I walked around, and then transmute that kinetic energy into something stronger, and channel that energy into a deadly ray of merciless lightning that, thanks to magic, moved even faster than regular lightning, at will. I'd like to say it could form a shield that would render me immune to all damage, until said shield's battery ran out. I'd like to say it could let me evolve into an exponentially stronger version of myself every time I spent a few weeks training with guns, or magic, or whatnot. I'd like to say it would let me unlock my latent potential, instantly making me as strong as I would be if I spent the rest of my life intensely studying magic, weaponry, and pretty much everything else, with no breaks to eat, sleep, or shit factoring into the equation. I'd like to say it would let me become a one- pony army, and then make that version of myself into an army, each one pony in said army a one-pony army in his own right.

But no, I'd just inlaid three rows of seven small diamonds along the lower end of the device in a straight line, equidistant from one another horizontally and about a quarter of that distance from one another vertically, and just beneath the device's three main built-to-last rubber-coated hard-metal buttons. They weren't enchanted; they were just there to look cool, and to make ponies wonder what amazing things I would have enchanted my Pip-Buck with. In all honesty, I understood the basics of enchantment, but at that point, I was about ten years of practice away from calling myself a master, at the very minimum. I wasn't about to potentially break my Pip-Buck by trying to put spells into those gems until I'd gotten myself a lot of practice.

Oh, and I'd ripped off somepony else's idea, code, and programming to give myself what some Tech-Sec Pony invented five years ago. Hey, my ability to talk one of the Tech-Sec ponies I had in my room as Personal Assistants into hacking that guy's Pip-Buck wirelessly and copying all of its data onto mine, letting me pick through its data and copy-paste the vital parts at my leisure, counted as 'Reverse-Engineering' that feature, right? If not, then sure, I ripped him off. But hey, it wasn't as if he was using what he'd given his Pip-Buck: The ability to make his device, as he called the function, 'Go Dark'. This feature rendered my device invisible to any and all networks and trackers at a moment's notice. It even confused my marker on the Pip-Bucks of my foes, letting me disappear from their devices until the next time they saw me, which re-added me to their EFS Display as a life form without a Pip-Buck.

If anypony asked me why I'd made the modifications, I'd act like I'd made the device even better. I'd boast about the advanced technology within my subtle yet ostentatious masterpiece while giving nothing vital or tangible away, buying time by talking up this shining example of Ponykind's mechanical insight. Or, if I was talking to someone that wouldn't find that charming, cute, or admirable, I'd say I only made the modifications I knew how to make, because I wanted to show off that I could. And if I was talking to somepony who would ask the hard questions, I'd just admit it; I wanted the right to call this thing the Pip-Buck 7777. The Pip-Buck 7K. The Pip-Buck Seven Seven Seven Seven. I would then claim that it didn't have any 'Real' upgrades or improvements, because why advertise your ability to negate one of the Overseer's best ways of tracking any theoretical ponies who somehow broke out of and left the Vault?

I'll be honest, I am aware that 7K means Seven Thousand, rather than Seven Thousand, Seven Hundred and Seventy Seven. However, it's my Pip-Buck and I can call it whatever I want. I'll admit, I was somewhat tempted to name it the Pip-F*ck, but upon looking that up, I'd found that some whore Midfielder(The local term for middle-classer) had somehow scrounged up the caps to pay a Worker(Someone with a job) to make something called that for him. It was just a Pip-Buck with a dildo mounted on the side like a metal spike. The dildo didn't even vibrate. What a f*cking casual.

My Pip-Buck was the exact opposite of casual. My Pip-Buck was the distilled essence of cool, fortified with his own brilliance, and marinated in grand-mother-f*cking glorious arcane science. Its black colour was a darker shade of black, because of course it was. The device was an extremely dark non-glossy non-reflective black, like the scorch mark a laser shot left behind, and the three buttons on its face weren't little red things with lights in them ready to light up when pressed, they were black and lightless, and with no writing under them to remind me which button did what. When it was active, the screen's background was not a greenish black, or a greyish black, but an absolute jet-black that made the text pop out beautifully. Rather than green, or amber, or any other colour, the on-screen text was a deep vibrant blue, like a blue flame. Those annoying scanlines had been removed. When you changed menus, the screen did not distort or flicker, it just changed, and quickly. So quickly, the sheer speed took a short while to get used to, the first few times you switched menus. Its name was not plastered somewhere on the side or top in large letters, its name was placed discreetly beneath the radio knob, written with a mechanical, precise font favouring straight lines over anything else, written in a deep, dark royal purple. It did not make that annoying humming sound older models subtly made when active until you stopped noticing it, and it didn't make that weird distorted sound older models made when you changed menus. But if I wanted to begin playing a recording of that noise for the sake of nostalgia, I could. No sound played when I changed menus or scrolled down. Not even a click. It had sixty-four gigabytes of storage space, because the number thirty two was for ifilthy f*cking casuals/i. The thick glass was protected by a thinner second layer of glass layered over it, enchanted through the arcane circuits themselves to repel dust, water, and bodily fluids, and to become unreadable to anyone besides himself whenever he wanted.

Yes, this meant that nopony could peek over my side and read what I was reading.

This also meant that the Torchlight Function, also known as 'That thing that makes the Pip-Buck glow in the dark like a very bright lamp or flashlight', could create a light only I could see and use. Thank you, magic!

One final thing – I promise, this really is the final thing – The powerful magical battery that powered the Pip-Buck 7000 was a few magical voltage grades stronger than the standard Pip-Buck Battery, not that it mattered much when a normal Pip-Buck's battery life was so absurdly long... But if scientific progress stopped when ponies said "Ok, I think we've gone far enough", it would have ground to a screeching halt centuries ago, on the day ancient ponies realized how great ploughs were for farming and proceeded to laugh at how pointlessly convenient things like water pumps near the farm or in the center of town would seem to their outdated sensibilities.

Well, I've told you a little bit about Pip-Bucks. I've told you about myself, my love, my home, and my future. I've told you about my past, the past of my Vault, and the past of my world.

There are a few other things I should tell you, but they aren't that important. The story will get to them, eventually.

There are so many things I need to tell you in this story.

But most of all, I need to tell you one thing…

* * *

 _Level Up!_

 _New Perk: Intense Training - With the Intense Training perk, you can put a single point into any of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes._

 _Chosen Attribute: Charisma_

 ** _STATISTICS_**

 _Strength: 7(+2 Early Bird=9)_

 _Perception: 7(+2 Early Bird=9)_

 _Endurance: 6(+2 Early Bird=8)_

 _Charisma: 7(+2 Early Bird=9)_

 _Intelligence: 7(+2 Early Bird=9)_

 _Agility: 6(+2 Early Bird=8)_

 _Luck: 8(+2 Early Bird=10)_

 ** _TRAITS  
_**

 ** _Gifted_**

 _You have more innate abilities than most, so you have not spent as much time honing your skills. All stats have a +1 modifier. All non-spell skills are lowered 10 points. You receive 4 fewer skill points per level._

 ** _Early Bird_**

 _Hey early risers! Enjoy a +2 to each of your SPECIAL attributes from 6 am to 12 pm, but suffer -1 from 6 pm to 6 am when you're not at your best._


	2. Emerald Dawn

"War… Has changed," Sunrise Stardust's deep tones could be heard all around the Stable, not through the omnipresent loudspeakers built into the smoke detectors in the ceilings of every room, or the larger shielded loudspeakers in the ceilings of the hallways between rooms every mile or so, but through the Pip-Bucks on the hooves of almost every pony in the bottom 70% of the Vault, and many of the upper percentages had their Pip-Bucks tuned into this broadcast, playing it silently while recording the audio input to be played back later. A speech of his was playing on multiple synchronized radio stations, but only one would have an interview with him after the speech was over.

"The ancient Zebra tribes waged war to gather slaves and wealth, but without freedom or innovation, their culture and society stagnated. Corrupt and moronic, not even all the Foreign Aid in the world could stop them from being a horrifying example of what the whole world would be like without Ponykind. The Griffons built an empire from its hunger for gold and territory, but as soon as it had unified its homeland, the Griffons lost their shiniest gold trinket and fell from grace, shattering apart and becoming a fractured, tribalized society of poverty-stricken, bickering nation states unable to provide for its lazy, cruel citizens as their hearts grew cold. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna solidified a shaky alliance between three small tribes in the middle of a frozen wasteland and transformed their trust in the Princesses into a scientific, cultural, agricultural, and economic superpower far beyond any founder's wildest dreams and fantasies, a shining beacon of hope and harmony in a world in dire need of it. But despite their status as the supposed moral victors of the war, their hubris and inaction allowed the Zebras to ensure that the whole world lost."

In the crowded lower levels of the vault, where families of nine and fifteen lied down in hallways around the few ponies with a Pip-Buck and waited for their next meals, and rooms full of multiple families with twenty or so ponies of all ages each silently and eagerly watched and listened to a small, simple, boxy homemade radio, Sunrise Stardust's voice was heard.

"The ponies of old, who ran and hid or died crying when following their principles bit them not only in their asses, but in the necks of their entire species and the heart of their world, may call themselves the moral victors of the war, or even the true victors of the war. Maybe they would call themselves something even more infuriating, if they were still around today. But when your inaction ensures that half of your foals die, and the other half stagnate as they are forced to hide underground like rodents, all because you're afraid of getting your hooves dirty so that the hooves of your offspring can remain clean, can you really call yourself moral at all?"

Over the crackling scream of constant electrical flow and the overdriven jingle of audible magic so strong you could hear it in your ears and feel it in your teeth, as row after row of fifty sweaty and tired adult Unicorn males and females standing on either side of a massive blast furnace-like device poured all the magic they had into focused, continuous beams of energy aimed at the device's many pylons, slowly recharging the thousands of magical batteries plugged into the device, Sunrise's voice came on a Pip-Buck with its volume hacked to a number far beyond the maximum volume, and his voice was heard.

"When old ponies dirty their hooves and break their backs to plant trees so that their foals, and the foals of their foals when they grow older, and all the other foals of equestria can relax in the shade of those trees, society is prosperous. We must be what our ancestors were not, and what their ancestors were! We must be builders, warriors, weaponsmiths, and more. We must care for crops and the world, we must plant trees and plant flags! To make Equestria great again, we will need to war, in the name of driving out our enemies and the enemies of life itself, and securing a lasting peace our foals, and their foals, and their foals can enjoy!"

Over the dripping of water systems, the faint rustling of leaves, and the burning hum of artificial solar light, the farmers and gardeners of the Agricultural Floors were silent and still as his voice was heard.

"War… War has changed. There was a time when war was waged to protect a country's civilians. To gather land and resources, for the good of all. To protect a country's interests and secure a brighter future. But now, war… War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. Outside these walls, wars are fought for survival. And inside these walls, a war is fought for control. There was a time when you would have had to defeat a country in a war, crush its soldiers, and decimate its resistance before you could get its ponies to accept the conditions we're living under! Then again, I suppose we have been defeated in a war. Perhaps that's why we're treated like second-class, third-class, or even fourth-class citizens in our own homes, by the offspring of those who stopped us from winning the war! Those who ruined our world were not only the savage Zebras, but the selfish, stupid elites who sought to aid them and stand in the way of Ponykind's deserved victory, to line their own pockets with profit, at the expense of their country, its ponies, and its future!"

Over the constant pitter-patter of hundreds of keyboard taps per second, the legions of ponies at their desks on the dedicated science and programming floors, their Pip-Bucks were blaring his voice loudly enough for all to hear, and his voice was heard.

"Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel the loss of our homeland, our Equestria. Every day, I can feel the loss of the basic rights our grandmothers and grandfathers signed away for the sake of 'Ensuring Stability' and preventing a coup for the sake of preventing the supposed scariest thing in the world, violence. Well, when you look at what Stable Security is doing to us every day, can you way what our grandparents did to us prevented violence? Our grandmothers and grandfathers signed away their rights, their mothers and fathers were complicit with this because they let this happen, and our mothers and fathers were complicit with this because they did nothing to stop this when it was their turn to take the reins of society and inherit the messes their parents left them. They all sold their rights, and our own, and the rights of our future fillies and colts. We were put in this Vault so we could carry the flame of ponykind's knowledge, morality, and culture. We were put in this Vault so that one day, when the background radiation and magical degeneracy decayed to safer levels, we could rise up and reclaim Equestria for ponykind, and purge it of the rapists, the murderers, and the rats biting at its wounds so it can never heal. But instead, our forebearers chose temporarily stability and a broken system that puts us in chains over life, freedom, and the very purpose of life itself. We were born into a world that mocks us with talk of excellence and virtue, competition and evolution, rights and freedoms, as we lie here, trapped like caged animals! We were born into a world that mocks us with talk of earning your keep when there aren't enough jobs to go around, because the lazy ponies at the top of the pyramid don't feel like allowing competition to threaten their monopolies, their strangle-hold on our Vault's goods. And for what? So that while some live… No, while some _exist_ in squalor and hopelessness, others can slave away for the benefit of those living the high life, draped in gemstones and gold, wasting the resources we need to survive? Those at the top control the food supply, the military, you, and your thoughts. They own your parents, and your offspring. They have the power to take your foals away from you and kill them in front of you, just because they didn't like the eye colour of one foal. You are their property, and you will remain their property until you're willing to stand up and fight! They own you! And if they don't own you, well… It's time you prepared yourself for the day you're going to prove it."

As legions of Diggers toiled and dug at the ground and walls around them, his voice was heard.

"I'm not calling for violence, because I don't have to. It's going to happen anyway, whether you like it or not. They're going to come for you, whether you follow the rules or not. I'm not calling for a pre-emptive strike against what we all know is coming, because I'd be shot by Stable Security in front of you if I did so. I'm not telling you to kill them before they kill you and everything you love. I'm telling you to be prepared for when they get around to coming for you. If you're listening to this, you're capable of individual thought, you're capable of greatness, you're capable of rebellion, and our current leaders want you and those with your genes dead for it. It's up to them whether they'll come for you tomorrow, in a week, or in a few months, and it's up to you whether you'll go quietly to the execution podium when it's your turn, or prepare for the next time another innocent is hauled in front of a crowd of civilians who, if they had a single just bone in their body, would do something about the mockery Stable Security makes of justice, society, and civilization itself with their perversion of Equestrian law, and rape of the Equestrian ponies. I'm calling for preparation, and for readiness. Start preparing for an all-out war like your life depends on it, because it just might. Remember, you have no homeland, in their eyes. You are nothing, in their eyes. You are their cattle. You have nothing to offer them but a lifetime of service or the moment of pleasure they'll get from crushing you like an insect while your friends and family watch helplessly. You have nothing to live for, in their eyes. And if they win, you really won't have anything to live for, or anything you need to live. Resource shortages have turned the world outside of this Vault into a constant scramble for survival, and inside it, resource shortages have been used as an excuse to slowly starve you to death to thin your numbers and reduce the damage an armed uprising could deal. There is a reason why the ponies who made this Vault gave us all weapons, not just the thugs in Stable Security. Do you really think you'll be spared the horrors of war, and the horror of actually having to fight for your rights, if you smile and go along with what the Elites in power are doing to you, your family, and the hope of Equestria's future you were meant to represent? You aren't safe. So lock your doors, hoard whatever you can, and prepare for the next food shortage. Prepare for the next riot, and the next excuse by the 'Elites' to initiate martial law. Prepare for the next time they dream up some nonsense excuse to not only continue treating you like cattle, but to treat you even worse than they did a month ago. Instead of preparing your excuses for doing nothing, and your reasons to say 'I always know that dang Traitor was no good! Ponies like him or her are the reason why the Elites mistreat us!', prepare for the day you'll start fighting back in the war they declared on you seventy years ago. They're going to kill you, if you let them, and nopony will be able to mourn you, for fear of being next. Are you going to be next?"

In the highest floor of Vault 177, one of the few uncrowded floors in the whole Vault, a floor that felt abandoned and empty as a result, his voice wasn't heard. And in one far-off corner near the Overmare's home, there was one wide, long room, divided into ten segments by steel-reinforced glass walls. There was a holographic targeting dummy at the farthest end of every segment, waiting to be shot. There was a stallion with a .45 calibre pistol, who crouched down for stability and and aimed carefully down the weapon's sights before his utterly-bored marefriend.

There was a single gunshot, followed by the sound of his bullet hitting the far wall, and the hologram releasing a high bell's "Ding!" tone to announce that it had been hit.

"Not bad," Emerald Dawn purred beside the shooter, and she looked gorgeous in her bone-white evening gown, the necklace a master Jewelcrafter – The combination of a gem enchanter, gem grower, and jewellery crafter, one of the highest-paid and most prestigious professions in the Vault – had made by magically phasing two twisted bands of "Gold" and titanium through a bunch of identical grape-sized diamonds, and the a metallic-silver-painted leather strap on her right foreleg, which held the metallic-gold-painted leather holster for a pistol she rarely bothered to shoot. It had been an ordinary .45 ACP semi-auto pistol, at one point. And then she'd intentionally designed and requested the gaudiest customizations she could think of, hoping that in its excessive opulence and extravagance, its notably high killing power would be ignored, a tactic that worked marvellously. A polished and reflective gold finish had been electroplated onto the upper long-slide chunk of the weapon, the bit you could slide back to chamber the next round after firing. The rest of the weapon had been coated in anodized titanium – You know that thing where you put titanium in an electrolyte solution and proceeded to use precise voltages of electricity to f*** with the metal until it changed colour, and it turned all prismatic and rainbow-coloured if you really knew what you were doing? That - which gave the metal a wonderfully nonuniform rainbow tint, and it made the weapon's golden trigger even more eye-catching. The weapon's thirty-three-round extended magazine had been electroplated with a fine golden coating, keeping to the gold theme that stood out more when so much of the weapon was prismatic. The weapon had been damascened – You know that thing where you inlaid a metal like gold or silver onto a different, usually-darker metal, using the fancier metal like ink to create beautiful patterns? That – with flame-like patterns using a magically-synthesized metal by the name of Photonium, something that had been nicknamed 'Activated Neon' by the scientific community, it frequently seen at late-night parties called 'Raves' before the war. Activated Neon was like a molten metal ink that glowed in your choice of colour at will once dried and fully charged with a small bit of magic, less than you'd need to lift a pear. She'd chosen to have the semi-magical ink constantly loop between every colour in the rainbow at maximum saturation, even when it was holstered. The weapon had a silver-plated underbarrel attachment in the form of a flashlight, and its light was obscenely and dangerously bright at 7 whole kilowatts. Thank you, oh steamy love affair of science and magic, for making it possible for such a dangerously bright light to come from such a small thing! And just like the Activated Neon in her weapon, the flashlight could cycle through any colour in synch with said magical metal's hues. The weapon's grip, something that was basically already decorative on a gun when you could wield it with magic, was not something mundane, like magically-grown leather or a fine old wood. Or something like that, only better, such as leather taken from an ancient and long-extinct magical beast, or wood from some historically, culturally, and magically significant tree. No, the weapon's grip was obsidian on the right side and white sapphire on the left, two large gems fused together and hardened with magic. On the right gem, a magically animated image could be seen within the black gemstone, an image of the head of Princess Luna sadly and wistfully looking up at the starry night sky, her mane billowing beneath her. On the left gem, a magically animated image could be seen within the white gemstone, an image of the head of Princess Celestia's head lowered in misery, her eyes closed, her mane billowing beneath her. Finally, the weapon's rear sight, a little metal chunk that normally stuck up at the back end of guns to 'Fill the gap' left by two similar chunks at either side of the weapon's business end to help you aim straighter, had been altered. Instead of a rectangular chunk, the weapon's rear sight had been swapped out with a five-pointed star, and small triangular chunks had been taken out of the weapon's small and rectangular frontal sights to match it. Rainbow Sun was the name of this weapon.

The mare, however, was even more beautiful. Her body was a bright emerald green that, through the application of cosmetic magic, held the toughness and beautifully unique colour of emerald gemstones even as it continued to move and feel like an ordinary green-furred body. Her bone-white evening gown concealed her "f***ing big emerald" Cutie Mark nicely, and her "Gold" (Gold Anodized Titanium) and regular titanium necklace suited her mane and eyes nicely. Her right eye was golden, and her left eye was silver. Her mane had been split into two well-brushed lengths of hair in two different colours, a main silver streak that curved up and around the right side of her face to almost hide her golden eye from view, and at its end, it abandoned its graceful curves and ended in a double-spiked jagged lightning bolt. The other, golden length of her mane hung down and twisted in a spiralling downwards drill before ending in a curved point near the crock of her right forehoof.

Leaning into the shooter and nuzzling him, Emerald Dawn spared a momentary glance at something she considered far less important and interesting than him, and she saw the glowing crimson marker on the holographic blue target's frontal shoulder, which marked where the figure had been hit.

Sunrise, however, had been aiming for the target's center of mass, the chest.

"I can do better," Sunrise Stardust's focused low growl purred to himself and her, his horn aglow with the vibrant golden light of his magic, which pulled the top segment of his .45 calibre pistol back with a satisfying click and released it with an even more satisfying click. With how wonderful this weapon was, he felt a crushing sense of pressure on him to use it effectively and prove that he was worthy of it. The next bullet slid into place, ready for action, and while his weapon was still a work of art, a real piece of precise magical engineering that still pushed the boundaries a bit with its customization, so to speak, it seemed positively mundane when compared to hers. His semi-automatic pistol had the same anodized titanium coating, but thanks to the consistent electrical charge that had been used on it, rather than the carefully-controlled and precisely-varied one used on Emerald Dawn's, the whole thing was a consistently bright golden shade that, in his personal opinion, conferred upon him all the visual and stylish benefits of gold without any of the downsides, such as gold's weight, softness, and all-around general cr*ppiness. The weapon's barrel was tipped with a nickel-finished fluted compensator of stainless steel. What the weapon lacked in glowing lines and moving images inlaid upon giant gemstones, it made up for with its black polymer and steel 100-round-total twin-drum magazine. And its black-coated steel underbarrel flashlight attachment, which matched his marefriend's gun's light in intensity and size, but not in currently-selected colour. A dignified pure white was the colour he could choose to unleash from his flashlight at any moment, and to his surprise, this flashlight internal mechanisms were actually compatible with his Pip-Buck's operating system, letting him turn said light on and off using his Pip-Buck. Three rows of seven diamonds ran along either side of the pistol's comfortable Black Mamba snakeskin grip, equidistant from one another vertically and slightly further apart from one another horizontally, as if you'd taken the pattern seen on the 'Six' side of dice and 'Turned it up a notch' while keeping the pattern intact. Speaking of the snakeskin grip, while it looked and felt like skin taken from a real Black Mamba – According to written accounts of this pre-war technique needed to make these, at least, as Sunrise had never seen a Snake before outside of pictures in books – The skin had been magically transmuted out of regular fabric, reconstituted into the desired form. Black Sun was the name of this weapon, and while this model of weapon was completely unfamiliar to a pony used to hitting shooting ranges with nine millimetre revolvers and improvised pipe pistols, he was a quick study.

As for what he was wearing… Vault Suits were seen as three steps below nudity that revealed an unimpressive and unflattering body in the Upper Levels, when it came to what you wore, so the pony wore a stylish black suit that had been tailored to perfectly accentuate the powerful musculature of his body, but he'd gone without the typical white undershirt, a choice that teasingly exposed the frontal pectoral muscle-valley of his powerful chest. He'd also gone without a tie, as he'd always hated those dang things. Copies of his Cutie Mark had been sewn onto the flanks of his rear, and his shoes… Well, the shoes his Farrier had drilled into his hooves were regular steel, once upon a time. Then he'd moved on up in the world, and mere steel was seen as too low-class for a pony's hooves, so a professional high-class farrier had offered to remove his current horseshoes and replace them with something a bit more acceptable in High Society. He'd been offered solid gold, like many young foals, but he'd chosen the unnaturally-occurring and incredibly tough Tritanium, a Titanium-like metal thirty times tougher than titanium, three times lighter, and just as easy to work with as steel. However, upon finding the metal unnaturally and off-puttingly light, he'd had the stuff mixed with Titansteel, a metal many times tougher and heavier than Tritanium. From then on, his Tritanium-Titansteel alloy shoes felt just two or three pounds too heavy at first, until he got used to them and grew older, and then they felt right. However, the 'Outer Shoes' he wore around his lower legs were a set of four matching golden anodized-titanium plate armour boots, with thick black rubber bottoms to reduce the noise. The rear boots reached higher up his rear legs than his frontal boots, which were really more like gloves that reached to one's wrist, rather than one's elbow like his rear boots. He supposed they would make fine additions to a set of plate armour, but when worn on their own, they were eye-catchingly tough and very, very stylish.

Emerald Dawn flinched in shock as he fired once again without warning, and she frowned. She spared a brief glance to see that he'd aimed for the holographic target's head, and had missed completely, the shot flying too far to the upper right of the blue figure. "Remind me again, why do you play around with these toys so often?" She asked. For one who could create a group of emerald gemstones tougher than Tritanium but less tough than Titansteel, each one the size of an apple, and launch them with more force than a cannonball, guns were quaint little things for the history books and non-magical folk, when they weren't opportunities to project an image. In her case, she projected the image of the ditzy, wasteful mare who seemingly saw weapons as fashion accessories, like so many other Upper-Level ponies. After all, when you had 'Earned' the right to carry deadly weapons, why choose to carry ones that look like the kind of 'Boring' things a Stable Security pony might occasionally pull out and use to protect themselves, their lives, and their property if they didn't mind a visit from Stable Security afterwards?

Whenever Sunrise thought about how barely-above-mediocre he was with most guns, even after years of regular practice with pistols, he wondered the same. And pistols were all he really knew, for he hadn't seen or touched a rifle or energy weapon until his ascension to the Vault's higher levels. Still… "Guns don't run out of energy, that's a tactical advantage no amount of magic practice can replicate. And guns will fire whether your concentration is broken or not. Sure, they don't shoot around corners, but a mage can't stockpile twelve-hundred Level Seven Spells in preparation for an upcoming match."

"You're right, guns don't run out of energy," She noted. "They run out of bullets, and those don't grow back faster after a good meal. Or at all."

"Then I'll be sure to carry plenty of bullets, when the time comes." Determination was clear in his voice, and he fired again.

While she normally liked it when he talked about his dreams, or alluded to them, something made her seem uncomfortable in response to that, and she decided to change the subject, but only slightly. "Speaking of guns… Are you enjoying your early birthday present, dear?"

"Hell yes," He said, a grin spreading across his face. His birthday was in two days, but he would be willing to wait a hundred years for a weapon this amazing. Still, he was glad that he didn't have to wait that long, because it meant he would have more time to look at this gun, fire it, and appreciate it in every way. Gods, the design, the weight, the power, THE f***ING KICK FROM EACH SHOT! And the wonderful, beautiful work of art this gun had been turned into, without compromising on its efficiency or lethality at all! Perfectly balanced, accurate, very sexy, and shockingly powerful, even when he didn't load in magically-infused rounds with magical crystals in place of gunpowder, or ordinary rounds he'd taken apart and loaded with a far stronger magically-made version of gunpowder and far more of it than the bullets needed. And because liquid magic had been infused into the Anodizing solution, he could charge his gun with magic to make it fire faster, harder, and more accurately, at the cost of slowly burning magic over time and burning a big chunk of magic with each shot. The perfect weapon!

"Are you going to show me how much you're enjoying it?" She cooed hopefully.

He holstered his gun for a second, the gun's twin drums shrinking and curling into the magazine so the magical bullet clip looked and functioned like an ordinary bullet clip, making the weapon far easier to put away in a standard holster. He turned around, and he snogged her like he was trying to break something, overwhelming her mouth with his lips and tongue. So forceful was he, she took a few steps back and he followed her, pressing on. It took her a few moments of shock before she melted into it and kissed back with almost as much force, which only made him press harder. He grabbed her body with his forelegs and spun them both onto the ground, on their sides, where he rolled on top of her and pressed his whole body against hers as his lips stroked hers and pressed the back of her head back into the ground.

The door to the Overmare's private shooting gallery pneumatically shot open, and to make up for his inability to slam a pneumatic door, the de facto head of Stable Security announced his presence with a loud roar of "f***ER!"

Sunrise looked like he was ready to murder somepony, for the briefest moment, and then an incredibly kickable smirk formed on his face as he regained control of his face and decided to taunt that little lamer a bit more. "f*** her?" Sunrise tauntingly wondered, turning his head around to look at the new arrival while keeping his legs firmly planted around the body of his mare, the Overmare's Daughter, something that always bit at the tempers of idiotic Upper-Level ponies who considered him an aberration and an affront to all of their high society's rules and perceived refinery, rather than an inspirational and life-affirming rags-to-riches success story that made them feel like they'd also 'Earned' the positions and power and riches they only had because they were born into those riches. "Well, I was going to, but-!"

"Shut the f*** up, Traitor." The black stallion in black Stable Security armour, the helmet cast aside and forgotten to reveal his unusually-bloodshot golden eyes and "Let lawbreakers see the true face of death before I kill them" in his own words, spat hatefully as he marched into the room with a f***ing 5mm minigun in his golden magical grip, pointed right at Sunrise. While the whites of his eyes had the usual red bloodshot cracks, the coloured and golden part of his golden eyes (The Irises) had far more crimson lines, a symptom of the overuse of one particular drug cocktail. Have you ever crushed up some Party-Time Mint-Al tablets and Buck (Never do Buck. Never even touch the stuff!) tablets together using the flat end of a Vault Elevator key card, swept the powder into a pint glass containing two shots of whiskey and the entire mixture of saline solution, bio-stim fluid, and healing potion you found inside the average Stimpak, which you had to squirt right into the mug? Have you ever done that, and proceeded to knock the whole thing back and down your throat before the taste got to you? If the answer is no, don't ever try it. Mint-Al Sundowners. Not even once.

The gun shook and jittered slightly, his magic wavering and flashing and flaring in an eye-catchingly unstable manner, but his body was perfectly still, aside from the fall and rise of his chest. Three armoured Stable Security ponies flanked him on either side, their faces concealed by long, rounded helmets with their darkened and reflective one-way-glass visors turned down. Each one had a rifle of their own in their magical grip, with the exception of two Earth Pony guards, who had twin double-barrelled shotgun-model Battle Saddles. Battle Saddles were… Saddles, only armoured, and with guns mounted on them, their triggers connected to a mouthpiece hidden behind their helmets. The inclusion of mirrored visors in standard Stable Security armour had been a recent-ish development, one around twenty years old. According to the Stable Security's head, they blocked laser fire from Energy Weapons, such as Laser Pistols and Plasma Rifles. They also made sure that when one cruelly broke your legs with a Baton for 'Resisting' too much, you saw your own terrified face as you begged for mercy and made those armoured jerks laugh at you, rather than a pony you could ever seek out and attempt to get revenge on.

"Finally, you reveal your true colours. Let me praise you, before you die…" Black Lightning spoke with an irritating and feigned voice of calm, polite, smug murderousness. And then, the mask slipped intentionally, revealing spite and fury, his minigun threateningly spinning up. "You had us fooled for this long! But no longer, Sunrise!"

This was bad, Sunrise realized. A kill squad had shown up here, with what was probably, judging their leader's expression, intent to kill. Then again, that jerkface Black Lightning always looked ready to kill someone when he wasn't smirking and sneering around with that stupid 'Cordial and polite and dignified high-class killer' voice he liked to pretend he naturally had, and hadn't just ripped off from some old book or holotape. Beneath that mask that wore another mask, everypony knew this stallion was just a whiny spoilt brat who loved throwing tantrums almost as much as he loved feeling strong, and had to bully and kill others to feel that way.

Sunrise knew he had to separate the group from their leader somehow, in case Black Lightning gave the order to attack. Something the current head of Stable Security, Night Blade, would likely not mind in the slightest, considering how the rapacious brute delighted in bad things happening to those around him who weren't vitally important to his continued abuses of power.

And considering that this killsquad's apparent leader was Black Lightning, one of that current Stable Security's head's many, many sons… This overgrown and mentally-underdeveloped foal wasn't the oldest or strongest of Night Blade's sons or daughters, but he was the cruellest and most magically-gifted. A combination like that, alongside his father's political pull when it came to what restricted and forbidden spells he could and could not use, made him a very dangerous opponent, even when he wasn't backed up by six armoured and heavily-armed soldiers and a f***ing minigun.

"I know you're still mad that I married the girl you wanted to marry," Sunrise's face and tones spoke of disapproval, and he spoke as if this wasn't the first, second, or even the third time Black Lightning had tried something like this. He got off his mare, letting her rise to her hooves, but staying close to her to keep her in their field of view. "But are you really going to drag this Strike Squad into our fight? What, were your usual flunkies not cutting it?"

If his verbal jab had worked, the statue-like armoured ponies didn't show it, and Black Lightning chose to ignore it. "We heard your little speech on the radio, Traitor." Black Lightning growled.

"What speech?" Emerald ditzily and innocently wondered.

"I've been here for two hours, practicing my gunplay with my best pony, while I broke in my new early birthday gift."

"Your what?" Black Lightning asked, and his minigun stopped spinning.

"My new golden gun. Chemical electric shit was done to the stainless steel's outer titanium coating, so it looks like it's made of solid gold. Is it alright if I take it out and show it to you?" Sunrise asked.

"Go ahead," Black Lightning smirked, expecting something underwhelming for some reason. Maybe he thought Sunrise would whip his gun out and point it at Black Lightning, getting in one shot before getting chewed up by his minigun's bullets. Why in the goddang…

To demonstrate the weapon, Sunrise drew and showed off his .45 pistol, making sure not to point it at any of them and give them an excuse. He considered trying to shoot at a holographic target dummy from this range, but at this angle, he didn't have a hope in hell of hitting his mark. Sure, trying to hit the mark and failing might entertain them, but he didn't want to look weak, not when there was a chance that this might make them more likely to attack, considering Black Lightning's love for abusing the weak.

"Dagnabbit, that's cool," One muffled and low mid-twenties female voice came from a clearly-impressed armoured mare on the far right.

"Forget the gun!" Black Lightning yelled. "That f***ing b******* speech on the radio, that was your voice!"

Sunrise groaned in exhaustion, which wasn't a reaction anypony was expecting. "Oh, for the love of… Did some low-down tunnel snake get some idiot to magically shapeshift into me, with the aid of a Polymorphic Potion, so he can push anti-establishment propaganda with my voice again, hoping to give that ridiculous slander some sort of authority and weight?"

"Ridiculous?" Emerald wondered innocently.

"Of course! Everypony knows a government needs to govern its citizens and regulate what they can and can't do, so they don't tear each other apart. For all of everypony's bellyaching about personal freedoms, what is a law if it's not an encroachment upon your personal freedom to hurt others or hurt society? Somepony's always going to be in the top spot, that's why all revolutionaries who think they can change anything with violence are idiots. And in times of crisis, governments have to tighten the belts of their citizens and keep things running smoothly while they ride out the storm."

Black Lightning's three bodyguards hadn't shot yet, so it seemed they approved of what Sunrise was saying, but Black wasn't buying it. "Cut the cr*p and-" Black Lightning began to spit.

Sunrise brought his Pip-Buck up, turned to the Radio tab, and turned his radio knob until he'd tuned into Crashendo Radio, one of this Vault's many radio stations. Then, he turned the volume up.

"-though, I must admit," Sunrise's voice said on the radio, while Sunrise himself flatly stared at the invaders. "I've always been partial to homemade explosives, when it comes to improvised weapons. Those padded cloth and Kevlar armour suits our Stable Security thugs wear might block the fire of small weapons, their helmets might let them shrug off strikes from pipes and thrown metal boxes, and they might have enough Auto-Inject Stimpaks to keep them in the field even if someone penetrates their armour and puts a hole in them, but they can't stop bombs from blowing their legs off. Every Stimpak they have is the auto-inject kind, so they can't rescue a teammate or stab one into a blown-off limb. An extension of their self-gratifying pseudo-ideology. Every pony, and every Stimpak, for himself."

"You heard it here first, folks!" The distorted voice of an unknown probably-male pony announced. "Even the score, throw some bombs, and do to their legs what they love doing to yours! Remember: Nails, Baking Soda, and Crushed Orichalcum for improvised explosive boxes, cans of gunpowder for improvised dynamite, and an open Sparkle Cola bottle of homebrewed alcohol with an old rag on fire for what I like to call a Twilight's Revenge! Light the rag, throw the bottle at someone trying to beat your foal to death in front of you, and watch that puckered glass bottle burn those Kevlar-coated jerks to death!"

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Black Lightning yelled over the sound of the radio.

"You can probably guess the answer to that," The 'Real' Sunrise shrugged. "I just tuned into Crashendo Radio, feel free to tune your own Pip-Buck to that and check it out for yourself."

Black Lightning aggressively twisted the knobs and dials of his Pip-Buck until his machine perfectly matched Sunrise's in the audio output department.

"Poetic justice, at its finest," 'Sunrise' approved openly on the Pip-Buck Radio, which the real Sunrise turned off. Black Lightning did the same.

"Looks like you've got yourselves an impostor to track down, and tracking down somepony who can impersonate anypony, even you, should probably be a higher priority than this little attempt to act tough in front of my mare," Sunrise shrugged, holstering his weapon and turning his radio off. And to himself, he not-so-quietly wondered as he rolled his eyes and walked back to the shooting gallery to silently inform them that the conversation was basically over, "Seriously, who in the world calls Manehattan Cocktails that?"

Black Lightning loudly growled and turned around, marching out of the room and taking his armoured soldiers with him. "My father will hear about this!" He snapped.

And now that Emerald Dawn was no longer being watched, she shot a chunk of emerald at the panel beside the door to close it, while she allowed her ditzy mask slip away from her features.

"I swear this on my life," Emerald Dawn promised with fire and fury in her eyes, "That jerk WILL suffer the consequences of pointing a gun at you."

"There's the Emerald Dawn I know and love," Sunrise grinned, and he snogged her once again.

"Mmf," was her response as she melted in and kissed back before regaining control of herself, just a little.

"Hey," She said between kisses, "How did you do that trick with the radio?"

"I hacked his Pip-Buck when nopony was looking," Another kiss, "And had it play the same recorded message I was playing at the same time," Sunrise boasted.

"Really?" She was impressed.

"No, every radio station in on this was playing a pre-recorded speech, followed by a series of recorded lines to weave into an on-the-fly fake interview. Every radio station not in on this just got the main speech, and somepony the listeners would want to hear in an interview, after the main speech. Not all of those someponies work for me, I had to have some friends call in favours to get some of them on the air, but it was worth it. Even radio stations that primarily cater to people who hate the Dark Stars gang found themselves with an interviewee either sympathetic to them, or opposed to them in a way that makes my those among my opposition that can be saved more sympathetic to me."

"I still think you should have put on some kind of mask or fake voice, when giving those speeches. That whole 'You can't prove I did it, and if I was doing it, I would have worn a mask because I am not a f***ing idiot' defence won't hold out forever."

"But it doesn't have to, because now, you can discipline Black Lightning and all the other Stable Security ponies that have gotten away with too much, for too long."

"All of them?" Emerald asked in confused surprise. "Sunrise, he only brought six with him. What am I supposed to do, punish all of them for his mistakes?"

"Punish the worst of the lot for his mistakes, and make it clear that he is why they are suffering. After all, you can't just pick six armoured ponies at random to punish, and neither of us could tell who the only one who spoke was. So you'll Nonlethally Decimate the whole force for letting this idiot think he could just bring a Kill Squad into the Overmare's Daughter's private training room and threaten her lover and get away with it. Because the alternative is looking so weak, Stable Security will think they can get away with this and worse for the entirety of your term as Overmare. And you'll just happen to 'Randomly' pick the worst of the worst among their number, and give them the most humiliating duties you can think of. In fact… How does having the worst rapists and power-abusers shovel shit for the Vault's waste filters sound, while the lesser criminals get more mundane duties, such as lower-level patrols?"

"That sounds delightful!" Emerald beamed. "It won't make up for what my mother lets the whole force do, but-"

"But it's a start," Sunrise nodded. He decided not to tell her what little surprise he'd leave for those ponies in that room. It was better that way. "And it'll teach them to respect you, when it's your turn to lead."

She seemed saddened by hearing that. "Yeah, because nothing says 'Respect me' like the threat of being forced to shovel shit in a small room on pain of death."

"The way they'll see it, they're being punished for displeasing you. They're being hurt, for going against your desires. And in their little world of 'The strongest is whoever can pick on others and get away with it', that makes you top dog."

"Maybe I don't want to be a dog, Sunrise!" She snapped. "Maybe I want to change more than who's calling the shots. Maybe I want an end to the shots."

He hugged her. "I want that, too. But sometimes, you have to end the shooting by ending the shooters. Not all life can be saved, no matter how much we might wish it could," He spoke solemnly. "Think: If Zombies were attacking, and you only had time to save one pony, would you save Black Lightning first, or somepony who's done nothing wrong? If you could only save five ponies, would you save Black Lightning and a few of his goons, or would you save some healers, mechanics, and other ponies who could help the rest of the survivors continue to survive? We want to make a better world for everypony, and part of that means dealing with the ones who'll get in the way of that for their own selfish and stupid reasons."

And then, the serious tone went away, and he chuckled. Levity had returned "…Why am I talking like I'm trying to convince you it's alright to publically execute them, in the manner they regularly do to starving civilians, rape victims, and witnesses? You're going to sentence power-mad tyrants and rapists to a few weeks of hard labour. It isn't even a fraction of what they deserve. Punishing them like this only feels like a big deal because it's the most they've ever been punished. Your mother usually lets them do whatever they want, as long as they don't upset any of her precious 'Elites', but you don't want to be like her, right?"

"No," She growled, disgusted at the thought.

"Then you're safe," He said, hugging her and stroking her mane with his right forehoof, just the way she liked it. His horn lit up with a blazing and warm golden glow, powerful and mighty and benevolent like the sun, and his magic gently lifted her tail. He sent waves of mana through her tail, straightening and brushing it just the way she liked, and she smiled and purred as she practically melted into him.

After enjoying this treatment for a few seconds, she mentally tried to resist and hold on to her thoughts, just long enough to voice her concerns. "I know, it's just… Well, we're not getting any younger. I'm probably going to rule the Sta- The Vault some day soon. And I'm afraid… I'm terrified that while I might start out with good intentions, I'll end up forced to make compromise after compromise, until I end up just like my mother, or worse."

"That'll never happen," He said compassionately and reassuringly, placing a forehoof on her shoulder. "No leader on the planet could be worse than your mother."

She burst into laughter, and her mood had instantly found itself more improved than a thousand words of meaningless hope-speech friendship-speech drivel could leave it. "You jerk!" She laughed, and shoved him away.

Sunrise casually hopped with the force to land about a foot away, serene and unbothered. His horn lit up, and he started playing with his Pip-Buck's radio controls. "I wonder if Crashendo's playing my music yet…"

A distorted and echoed voice spoke, screamed, and whispered from his Pip-Buck at the same time. "-been a great interview, thanks for coming!"

"Any time!" Sunrise's voice came from his own Pip-Buck, and a pony could be heard as he got up and trotted away, leaving the recording booth.

There was a cough to cover up the sound of a click, as somepony on the radio turned something off.

"And that's it for today's interview!" Crashendo's obnoxious radio-personality voice blared out from Sunrise's Pip-Buck, a way of speaking he'd copied from old pre-war holotapes. "Remember, Crashlings! Make sure you and all your Crashtastic friends are tuned to Crashendo Radio tonight at 9PM, because we're testing out a new Payload Injection System, courtesy of Sunrise Stardust himself! What does that mean? It means free books if you tune in at 9PM, no matter where you are. That's right, no more waiting for forms and other junk to let you head to a floor with a terminal full of free books! No more waiting around for months for someone on your Vault floor to get a copy you can copy! With this, there'll be free books for all, as soon as they're released! Well, if this goes off without a hitch. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your granny, tell everypony! And if you know anypony whose musical tastes are more 'Trash' than 'Crash', grab their hooves and fix their Pip-Buck tunings yourself if you have to. Crash into you later, Crashendo out!"

Comprehension dawned on Emerald's face. "You recorded your responses in that interview, and had Crashy there play them when the time was right."

He nodded proudly.

"But how did you time it so perfectly?"

"Remember that time you took me to a Stable-Tec Vigor Tester Machine to measure my intelligence, and the machine burst into flames?" He asked her.

"No, but I remembered when you started telling ponies that happened."

"It adds to my mythical image," He shrugged. "Anyway, I had ponies watching Black Lightning at different points in the Vault, communicating through Pip-Buck calls to tell Crashy where he was, how close he was getting, and when he needed to make the bulk of my speech play, giving me the biggest window possible for that synchronized-Sunrise-voice moment."

"Impressive," She purred, getting closer to him.

"I have to head to the Tech-Sec personally, soon," Sunrise quickly said before she could jump him, "That radio injector script was the down payment for some high-end CRAKs."

That surprised her for a moment. "You paid with the radio injector? You barely did anything to make that."

"True," Sunrise admitted, "But the guy I'm buying robots from won't know that."

This confused her. "Wait, why would a Tech-Seccer want their books to be distributed for free?"

"Uh… Because it's morally the right thing to do?" Sunrise pretended to guess, because she didn't need to know all of the details behind this transaction. "Information isn't a finite resource, like gas or coal. Copying a file won't reduce its value unless you're giving the copy away for free, and the copy customers read can't make them want to pay you for letting them read it anyway. Besides, if you're writing a series and you give away books one and two for free, that's free advertising for books three through six. Also, some larger publishing companies are starting to get a monopoly on what books can and can't say. Well, they've had that monopoly for a decade, but they're starting to get so obnoxious about having that monopoly, even the worker drones can see it. Crashing that market with no survivors is the only way to keep information free."

"Wait, how does that script work again?"

"The Pip-Buck locks onto a radio frequency, the frequency broadcasts information instead of sound, the radio station's name is changed to some commands for the Pip-Buck to execute, so that it can read the audio data as actual data. The data pouring in sounds like shit, and it injects a new file into your Pip-Buck's Notes section, with the Holotapes. That new file is a book, but I could probably repurpose this to inject viruses. If I could get my victims to listen to a certain radio station at a certain time."

"So are all books going to be free now?"

"Honestly, just the ones we choose to distribute. We'll prioritize the best and most important books. Things on magic, first aid, education, and so on. Honestly, as morally upright as this is, it's also a demonstration of power. A 'We can make any book you want to sell worthless at will, and everypony will love us for it, even Stable Sec' kind of deal, to take the Publishing Firms down a peg and remind them that they serve the information in books, not the other way around."

She started to see the big picture. "That'll convince them to stay out of trouble. And the goodwill this will generate for that Radio Station you practically own…" She trailed off in approval.

"Is a nice side-benefit," He purred with a smirk, and he nommed on her ear, which made her giggle.

"Oh, you," She giggled, and kissed him.

He kissed back, harder, and their kissed lasted for a whole five minutes before he pulled back. "I'm sorry, but I need to go and-" He explained.

"It's alright," She said, hugging him. "We'll have have all the time in the world to be together once we've made this world beautiful again."

"I love you," He whispered in her ear, and he meant it as he hugged her body almost as tightly as the pain of having to leave his true love, even for just a moment, squeezed at his heart. One last squish at the end of the hug, and he was ready to let go and trot over to the exit door's open button, where he chose to shut the pneumatic door behind him, leaving her alone.

He thought of the world. The world... It was beautiful once, but now, the world outside looked like cr*p. And not just because the dust clouds and thick Overdriven Pegasus Factory-generated clouds painted the world in greyish and brownish hues.

He thought of the cold, sunless world outside his Vault, of destroyed buildings and irradiated seas, and those miserable thoughts were aided in harming his mood by the coldness and lifelessness of this Vault floor, each hallway eerily hollow and empty and deathly cold. He was used to seeing hallways full of bodies, and feeling their collective warmth whether he liked it or not, so this was a shock. Just try taking a long walk through an area that felt like it had escaped into the real world from a horror story only a Vault Pony could understand some time. It was something else.

His hooffalls echoed through the deafening silence, dull thuds of rubber-tipped metal that just sounded wrong without countless voices, the sound of clothing rustling against clothing, the sound of somepony, somewhere, popping the top of a glass bottle of water, or a can of something, be it a soft drink or hard drink, untainted or with some potion or spice added to it for flavouring and to enhance some kind of experience.

Finally, he made it to the six Vault Elevator doors, though only one could open, and the rest had been visibly welded shut. He hit that Vault Elevator's call button, and waited for the elevator to greet him. He tried not to think of his wife/soon-to-be-wife or whatever she was while he waited. He tried not to think of her beautiful face while he waited. He tried to focus on the area around him, and see it surround him in his mind's eye as he closed his eyes. Every colour besides black, light purple, and dark purple left the world as he chose to see things as his other senses saw them, wireframe versions of walls, ceilings, and the elevators appearing in his vision. The flames of life faded into view, and he saw indistinguishable walls of multi-coloured fire beneath him, each flame having a different colour to represent each pony's magical glow blending together to create blobby walls he couldn't make heads nor tails of.

He could still make out lifeless objects, such as the walls, floors, and doors beneath him, but the flames of life were like thick rainbow smoke clouds that got in the way of making out any fine details.

Turning his head back to where he left his wife, he sensed and 'Saw' her white-sparkling emerald magic blaze out like a sparkling bonfire as her joyous, love-filled heart continued to think of him.

He smiled proudly, as if the complete and total love his mare had for him was a nice story he'd spent hours planning, crafting, and writing, something he'd worked hard on and had finally finished.

"I did that," He said to himself, regarding her overwhelming, almost divine adoration of him.

Finally, the elevator dinged loudly and its doors opened, a cold steel cube of a room greeting him. He entered and gazed upon the control panel, one with only one button. Hitting the button, the doors of the elevator closed, and he began to descend one floor.

Sunrise waited around for a bit inside the elevator. "Outside these walls," He began to softly almost-sing to himself, not putting much effort or air into it but getting the notes right anyway. "Madness lies, in a world of constant war. A genera-"

The doors opened to another eerily empty room, but this one, he knew, had more than two or three ponies on the floor at any given time. This one simply had so few ponies, they could all fit inside their own private bedrooms, without any overflow. He left the elevator and turned right to find another elevator, and he hit its call button.

When the elevator arrived and opened itself up to him, he entered its cold cube interior and hit the Down button. The doors slowly closed, and the metallic cube descended on rails of hardened light and stored magic, like all other elevators in the Vault.

"A generation of revenge will rise to even the score," Sunrise absent-mindedly sang to himself. And then he decided to bring up his Pip-Buck and scroll over to the Radio Menu. A list of over fifty stations greeted him, and most of them could only be accessed up here due to the weaker radio transmitters these floors used for the sake of feeling as exclusive as possible. They kept their music and radio hosts to themselves, considering these things 'For High Society Ponies only!', with the exception of tracks they would occasionally send down to lower-floor radio stations they hated, with angry letters attached. Angry letters full of all kinds of fancy-sounding but utterly banal loser-tier insults you'd expect to see used by a supposed young genius in a really, really lame Young Adult novel. Generic insults with no substance to them, designed only to make their user feel more special and intelligent and enlightened than he would if he or she had simply yelled "You have the big gay and so does your mother!" instead, something that would express the same sentiment and require far fewer words, which required far less ink.

Speaking of angry letters, they served as excellent things to trade away for food and other necessities, when the usual flow of supplies to your level had been restricted for whatever reason. Some strange ponies liked to collect angry letters from the supposed 'Elites', and anything else connected to them. Perhaps they liked the way the phrase 'Go off and get thee to a fornicatorium' looked when it was written in fancy curly letters using green ink that had real emeralds or sapphires or rubies crushed into it for the sake of ostentatious show-offery.

But the names of these radio stations, however…

* * *

 _Level Up!_

 _New Perk: Mare Destroyer - In combat, you do +10% damage against female opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex._


End file.
